The Buzz

Mrs. Kerrigan, a North Reading high school biology teacher, has known she wanted to be a teacher since she was a child.  For her, choosing her career wasn’t so much of what she wanted to do, but what she wanted to teach.  It was only after her senior year advanced biology class with Mr. Weiss that Kerrigan knew that biology was her calling.

“When I was younger, I loved to help people and talk a lot,” Kerrigan recalls.  This was how she knew she wanted to be a teacher.  It was the aspect of assisting others and guiding them to understand a topic.  Now, years later, Kerrigan considers how she feels about teaching now.  “I consider myself a facilitator of learning experiences,” she claims.  “I love it when students ‘get’ something.”  One of Kerrigan’s favorite tactics is getting students to discover something on their own.  She believes that teaching is not reciting information.  Every student has the potential to learn through exploration and discovery of a topic.  It is her job to lead them to the right answer.

Kerrigan is an early riser, regularly waking before the sun at 5:30 to ensure that she has a leisurely morning of playing Wordle and Connections while sipping her morning coffee.  After dropping her son off at school, she’ll arrive at North Reading high school at around 7:30.  Most days after school, if it’s still light out, Kerrigan will go to Breakheart Reservation after school to walk her dog and peacefully end her day.

“Something that most people probably wouldn’t know about me is that I take adult tap classes a few times a week,” reports Kerrigan.  “I’ve gone for about seven to eight years now.”

In Kerrigan’s early life, her parents were greatly involved with the activities she participated in.  They supported the local community theater, which has influenced her to be involved with her son’s marching band in Wakefield.  She will often help out with events for the band and sport her Wakefield High School marching band sweatshirt.  Additionally, Kerrigan finds value in volunteering for the Wakefield Educational Foundation.

Kerrigan is known throughout the school community as a trusted adult, someone students could go to when in need of extra help or advice.  She is kind and compassionate, a teacher who truly cares about her students’ success both in and out of the classroom.  She is personable and wants every kid to understand the material instead of acing a test.  Mrs. Kerrigan is a teacher that North Reading can be proud of.