After an arduous trek to the D floor from the humanities hallway of JP, I come to room D115 to meet Mrs. Brumbach, a kindly middle-aged language arts teacher. She is standing outside her room already chatting with a student, so I head into her room and take a seat by her desk, on which is propped a light-up “Brumby Loves You” sign.

Rachel Brumbach, Mrs. Brumbach to her students, has been teaching at McCaskey for 13 years. “I love it here,” says Brumbach, “Me and Mrs. Nolt used to say to each other every day ‘we have the best job in the world.’” 

However, Mrs. Brumbach didn’t always want to teach. In fact, she goes as far as to say “I never wanted to be a teacher.” “I went to school for creative writing. I double-majored in English and creative writing, minored in Spanish. I wanted to get an MFA in poetry and maybe get into editing.” 

“My mom always thought I would be a teacher. She had been a secretary in SDOL for 25 years. Kind of like, a legendary figure at that point,” reflects Brumbach.

Working as a waitress at home in Lancaster at 22, Brumbach’s old principal from Lancaster Catholic came in and told her about an opening the school had for an English teacher. “Back then the only certification a teacher needed was in their subject.” 

“I had a community at Catholic, so I decided to apply knowing I probably wouldn’t get the job. But low and behold, I ended up getting the position, and I was shocked. My first year teaching, it was crazy. I had 4 classes, I was teaching AP seniors, and Brit-Lit, and had some students that really struggled with reading.” 

Though her first year teaching was rough, Brumbach discovered her passion for teaching immediately. “I love teenagers and that time of life. I love seeing students connect with one another, form relationships.” 

“5 years later, I got this job. Someday I want to retire from here…this is my 13th year at McCaskey, 19th year teaching overall.”

Though Brumbach has found her calling in her day job at McCaskey, she is also a poet. “I’ve been trying to get back into it, it’s been a while. I was writing the most in college,” says Brumbach as she leans back into her chair and stares wistfully at the ceiling. 

“My biggest writing accomplishment is getting first place in this writing competition at Mount Holyoke college.” She added, “It was called The Glascock award, and it was really cool because Sylvia Plath also won it.”

But teaching isn’t an easy job, and Brumbach has had to put her poetry on the back burner for the time being. “I would love to get published, but being a parent and teacher it’s hard to get my brain in that mode.” 

Though right now she can’t pursue her own publishing ambitions, Mrs. Brumbach has been helping her students pursue their dreams in both journalism as well as art. “Last year, Mr. Coonan and I advised Burning Glass (McCaskey’s literary magazine) club. This year, it’s the first year, it’s a class and I get to teach it.” 

But that’s not the only way Mrs. Brumbach has helped foster McCaskey’s creative spirit. “I was a Vidette editor for 5 years, from 2013-2018. It was over at East at that time.” 

Mrs. Brumbach is devoted to creating an engaging and comfortable classroom environment for her students. “It’s important you have a positive high school experience, you’ll remember it for the rest of your life. It won’t really be the modes of rhetorical analysis you remember from class, it will be the experiences you share and the connections you make.”