Communities Lauren Beigel '02
Found dream job in teaching humanities
“Just as I didn’t want to pin myself to one discipline at Marlboro, I resist being cornered into using one set of skills at work,” says Lauren, a humanities teacher at Compass School in Westminster, Vermont. “This job is perfect for me because no two days are the same.”
Before settling on teaching, Lauren was a paralegal for an immigrant advocacy and legal services organization in Arizona. Although she had traveled to Cuba, the Dominican Republic and Guatemala while at Marlboro, she learned a great deal more about the world through the eyes of immigrants and refugees in deportation proceedings at a huge detention center in the middle of the Sonoran Desert.
“I was inspired to teach by my work in Arizona because I realized that cultural intolerance is rampant in our country, but it’s not too late to instill cultural appreciation in our youth,” says Lauren. “After seeing how reactionary government policies directly broke apart families, communities and compassion in our country, I knew that a generation of real problem-solvers was needed.”
Lauren got her M.Ed. at Antioch University New England and began teaching at Compass School, her “dream job,” the same fall. Yet she has not forgotten the inspiration of her experience in Arizona. She has coordinated a cultural exchange with a school in inner city Baltimore, Maryland, and has traveled with Compass high school students to the Arizona-Mexico border to study immigration issues.
“I was so moved to be back at the Mexican border and to see students ready and wanting to take action,” she says. “How much more satisfying can a job get?”