Katie Ballen

Katie Ballen recently joined the learning center team as a paraprofessional. She graduated in 2016 and has since worked at Nike and the Dana Farber Cancer Institute. She hopes to explore career opportunities in education at the high school. Some of Ballen’s favorite pastimes include listening to music and doing activities outdoors.

What made you want to be a teacher?

I’ve kind of been all over the place. I graduated last year in 2016. Then I went to grad school for a pre-med program, took a break from that, (that was in Baltimore) came back to Boston and started working retail at Nike, and then, my last job before this was at the Dana Farber doing clinical research. So, I think that I might want to get a Ph.D. in psychology, or maybe be a psychiatrist. I think it would be really cool to be a guidance counselor at a school or something like that. I’m not sure exactly what I want to do, but I think this will help me make some sort of a decision.

What was highschool like for you?

I really liked school, which I feel like not a lot of kids do. I was really into Latin, and I started a beekeeping club in school which was fun. I also went to a boarding school where they were really hard on us and kind of strict, so that was kind of a bummer but I liked the classes and my friends.

What is one thing that you want the students that you teach to understand?

Building skills of advocating for yourself, gaining independence, coming on time, building strong work habits, starting to be a hard worker and stuff like that.

What do you think about the high school so far?

I really like it. It’s definitely a strong community. I’ve been to a few of the assemblies during the advisory periods, and I love the cheers, especially “we are BHS” and things like that.

What are some of your interests outside of teaching?

I really like to swim. I really like to hike.  I love listening to music, going to concerts. I went to a festival this past weekend. My favorite band was there and there were a bunch of others. I love going to festivals because you see all different types of bands that you wouldn’t have known about before. [My favorite band is] called Twiddle. They’re really good. They’re a jam band, so almost similar to Phish.