Due to Mrs. Caitlyn Belhumeur’s change in position from life skills teacher to our new guidance counselor, we have a new life skills teacher, Mrs. Laurie Abel.

Mrs. Abel may be new to our district, but she is not new to teaching. But with Beaver Area’s one-to-one iPad initiative and other technological advances, she admits that she sometimes feels new to teaching. Mrs. Abel taught for 12 years until taking time off to raise a family (a daughter who is in ninth grade and a son who is in sixth grade) becoming a stay-at-home mom.

A bit of an itinerant, Mrs. Abel has taught and lived in Washington D.C., Raleigh, North Carolina, and even in Illinois. She has also lived in Atlanta, though she didn’t teach while living there. She taught fourth grade before she went to grad school to get her special education degree.

Mrs. Abel’s goal to teach in the Pittsburgh area has brought her back to where she grew up. It has taken her 26 years to achieve that goal. That just goes to show you that you should never give up on your dreams.

As a life skills teacher, Mrs. Abel says that one reward is that she gets to teach small classes. This helps her get to know her students really well and create long-lasting relationships. However, a challenge is that she has to teach several different subjects throughout the day.

She would like to continue to take several field trips with the life skills students, but she also would like to take them to some new places instead of the same field trips that some of the students have already experienced in the past.

“Some of the students have been a part of the life skills program for more than one year, and so it would be nice to take the students to different places than they have gone before,” Mrs. Abel said of her future plans for the life skills program.

Mrs. Abel would also like to start a club to help make new students to the district feel more welcome.

As a hometown girl despite her many temporary stops, Mrs. Abel naturally loves the Pittsburgh Steelers, Penguins, and Pirates. She also loves to hike and ride bikes with her family. Of all the things that take up most of her free time, she loves to read and she loves her church.

Mrs. Abel says that she is very excited to teach here.

“Everyone has been very friendly and the whole school feels like a big family. And everyone is so proud of their school.”

Mrs. Abel loves the feel that the school gives and the way that she has been treated by faculty and students as a new teacher. She says that the family feeling Beaver Area offers is not something you experience at other schools. On that note, she also loves that there are therapy dogs in the school.

Let’s make Mrs. Abel feel very welcome here at Beaver Area High School as she continues to achieve her dreams and goals.