Kathleen Huyck is an essential member of the BSM community as the front office receptionist.
Unsung Hero: Kathleen Huyck
She’s the first person you see walking into the school, the first person you hear when calling the school, and even the first person your parents see when they are trying to get into the building. In fact, Ms. Kathleen Huyck could be considered the face of Benilde-St. Margaret’s.
“I’m the front office receptionist at BSM and this is my third year,” Huyck said. One can always hear Huyck’s voice whenever there is a phone call coming into the main office or there’s a class trying to get into the building after a field trip. But her job as an office receptionist is not limited to that. “I’m exposed to a lot of different tasks or jobs. I substitute at the attendance office when Ms. Jacobson is gone,” Huyck said.
Her work in education didn’t just start at BSM though. “I worked [in] public schools [with] transportation reporting. Let’s say you just live in Bloomington, and you didn’t use the Bloomington public school. Because your taxes always pay for the school bus, the public school would have to send your family your reimbursement check. I need to send the public schools the number each year in the fall,” Huyck said. While acknowledging that there are multiple important jobs to handle, she always enjoys being occupied. “I feel like there is a huge variety in the job, so you don’t just get to do the same thing everyday,” Huyck said.
In spite of the variety of crucial jobs Huyck handles on a daily basis, her jobs go beyond maintaining the BSM office. Occasionally, she will have to handle incidents from outside of the school. “Once, a man stopped by and said he was having a heart attack. I think he was not well at all, but we can’t let him in because the students come first and you never know. So, Coach Creer came and let him sit on his cart and we said we will happily call an ambulance but we just can’t let you in,” Huyck said. That’s when the vital importance of Huyck’s job comes in: she’s not only the face of our school, but she also helps to guard the lives of all the students in this building. And, in a country where school violence is constant, keeping us safe is her top priority.
In contrast to those incidents though, she gets to be part of the actual fun surprises. “I’ve had some staff people’s spouses calling to plan a surprise. They were going to drop something off, so we have to be part of the surprise. Madame Hyde’s husband has surprised her twice, so I got to be part of [it]. He dropped flowers off and had their son come and get them. We had to walk the flowers down the back way so she wouldn’t see them,” Huyck said.
Huyck loves working at BSM and enjoys the energy and sense of humor that the staff and students bring. “I really enjoy the variety of the job and I love being around the students, and I work with great co-workers. I have encountered nothing but lovely things from all of them,” Huyck said.
Charles Nepomuceno (Engineering)
This year, BSM welcomes a new engineering teacher, Mr. Charles Nepomuceno. With over a decade of experience as a professional engineer and multiple years of experience coaching robotics, Mr. Nepomuceno is a valuable addition to the department.
For Nepomuceno, engineering runs in the family. His father, an electrical engineer, exposed him to the world of engineering at a young age. In fifth grade, Nepomuceno was introduced to CAD (computer aided design) and has been hooked ever since. “CAD design and 3-D modeling was kind of like my video game growing up, until I realized video games were really cool too,” Nepomuceno said.
In addition to his career as a professional engineer, Nepomuceno has a long-running involvement in education and coaching. Most notably, he coaches the Two Rivers robotics team and heads the administrative side of the FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) which holds events across Minnesota. “Basically right out of high school… I started immediately volunteering at the regional level,” Nepomuceno said.
Nepomuceno’s main connection to BSM is fellow engineering teacher Anne Dougherty. After helping Dougherty mentor a FRC team years ago, she recommended that Nepomuceno think about teaching. Ultimately, Nepomuceno’s decision came down to pursuing what he enjoys. “Essentially, I’ve always taught outside of my day job as a robotics coach, and I realized that that’s really where I had the most fun during my work day. So I figured that would be a fun thing to do for my entire workday, which is what made me switch from engineering to teaching,” Nepomuceno said.
This year, Nepomuceno’s primary goal is to increase communication between different class sections. Since the collaborative nature of engineering necessitates communication between peers, overcoming physical barriers- such as having multiple classes per section- is an important component of operating as a team. “Knowing how to communicate across groups, across the times when you’re not face to face all the time… is a really important skill for [students] to gather when they become professionals in the engineering world,” Nepomuceno said.
Because companies are reevaluating their priorities and figuring out what work post-Covid will look like, Nepomuceno said this was the best time for him to switch jobs. “Transitioning to a completely different job didn’t seem as daunting because, at least at my company, everyone was transitioning to a new way of working,” Nepomuceno said.