This story originally appeared in the summer/spring 2019 issue of Harker Magazine.

Pauline Paskali teaches three courses at the upper school: regular and AP American Literature, and Genre Studies. Her love of language and literature are evident even in casual conversation, and she’s known not only for imparting that passion to her students, but for her warmth and kindness. But people may not know of her deep love for nature – “[its vastness] always challenges me and inspires me to carry on,” she says – or that she has two pet chickens, Clementine and Guinevere. Raised in Connecticut and Massachusetts, this East Coast transplant tells Harker Magazine a few more fun facts about herself.

What is the best piece of advice you’ve ever gotten?
Let go of what is beyond your control.

What are you good at?
I often find myself in the role of backup photographer at weddings and gatherings of friends and family. The distance and intimacy created by my DSLR lens enables me to capture something essential about the people I love.

What do you love most about your life?
Most people have to go to work every day, but I still get to go to school. Who doesn’t love being in an environment full of curious and kind people, young and old?

What is something interesting about you that almost no one knows?
I spent my junior year of high school living with a French family in a country house outside of Rennes. I discovered there my passion for walking and for butter.

Where is the one place in the world that you like to escape to?
Whenever I need a reboot, I return to the place I spent my summers as a child, a tiny village in the rugged Pindus Mountains of northern Greece.

What is your most treasured object and why?
Recently we discovered a book containing a poem my father had written when he was in his early 20s. No one in my family knew about his writing. Reading his verse brought back to life the young man who long ago reluctantly immigrated to America to assuage the pangs of hunger.