From Wando to Italy, longtime English teacher Lynne Poggioli makes her departure into retirement to travel across the world after teaching for 35 years.

When she first joined Wando’s staff 12 years ago, Poggioli started out as an exceptional education teacher and later made her transition into teaching English courses.

“When I first came into Wando, I was working with exceptional ed kids in inclusion classes, and then went back and got certification for secondary English and I’ve been teaching English one honors, English CP, and also creative writing,” Poggioli said.

Although Poggioli is sad to leave Wando, she feels excited as she will be traveling across the world to be with her family.

“It’s definitely bittersweet because we’re going to be moving. We’re going to be moving back to our family in Chicago and spending half the year in Italy where we have siblings,” Poggioli said.

No matter how the methods of teaching have changed over the years, altogether, Poggioli believes the most important aspect of teaching is to form a bond with the students and to make English influential in their lives.

“It is a different world today than when I started teaching so connection with your students is important. Make literature connect to their life, a real world experience with even ancient literature helps everybody stay motivated,” Poggioli said.

Sophomore Emma Stanton took Poggioli’s creative writing class this year. Before taking the creative writing course, Stanton already wrote stories independently.

“So far as creative writing goes, I’ve been writing on my own for fun,” Stanton said.

This course allows Stanton to continue to write diverse and original stories and also challenge her by presenting her work to her class and teacher.

“I like when we write short stories, and then sometimes we share them,” Stanton said.

Poggioli sometimes centers the writing assignments around current events or just for fun. Stanton’s favorite story that she has written was an exciting thriller that Poggioli picked the theme for.

“For those short stories there’s sometimes when she picks a theme like, what’s going on at the time, but we did a suspense story, that was fun. I wrote about this crazy guy who broke out of a mental asylum,“ Stanton said.

At times when Stanton feels insecure about her writing, Poggioli always encourages and supports her hard work by leaving notes of motivation online where Stanton submits her work.

“My favorite memory with Mrs. Poggioli is how on Canvas, whenever I write something, she always comments and gives me feedback and it makes my day. She’s so nice,” Stanton said.
Poggioli’s kind words improve Stanton’s writing and attitude as she reassures Stanton and consoles her self-doubt.

“She just boosts me up every time. There’s one piece and I didn’t like it but I submitted it anyway. She just said it was good and I was being too hard on myself,” Stanton said.