Buxton Welcomes New Faculty

Buxton is excited to welcome four new faculty members to our community!

Story Southworth is teaching The Cold War History class, English II, coaching girls’ soccer, and living in the girls’ dormitory.

I grew up in the small town of Andover, New Hampshire surrounded by trees and animals. I built tree forts in the woods, used a magnifying glass in my back yard, and was lucky to learn from teachers who wanted to know me outside of the classroom. These experiences shaped my ideas about education, and the seamless match up of values with Buxton has made me quickly feel at home.

Influential experiences in my life include living in New Zealand, Southern France, Scotland, on a schooner traversing the North Atlantic seaboard, and living in a bus driving along the U.S – Mexican border. I am a lover of mountains and the challenges they pose at any age. I have returned to the Grand Tetons in Wyoming for more than a decade, to huck it up thirteen hundred footers, and to backpack into the wilderness for the adventure of big sky and deep relationships.

At Connecticut College (’15) I majored in history and secondary education. I completed my student teaching at Waterford High School in Waterford, Connecticut, and then taught a Human Rights elective for part of last year at Proctor Academy in Andover, NH. I enjoy playing soccer, and coaching it this fall has been a new opportunity to teach and play!

Throughout my life I have been in a position of being mentored and mentoring, and I am so excited to have found a school where both take place every day!

 

Rachel Ambrose is teaching French and living the girls’ dormitory.

A product of a small (smaller than Buxton, if one can believe) independent school with a focus on experiential learning in the hills of New England myself, I am excited to have my first year at Buxton be well under way and to be teaching four levels of French at this unique place. I love the humility, the enthusiasm and the curiosity of the students at Buxton. There is an indefinable quality all Buxton kids share, though they are from many different backgrounds—a certain je ne sais quoi, so to speak. I am passionate about second language learning and acquisition and cross cultural communication, and I think it is increasingly important in our globalized and tech-oriented epoch for students to emerge from their education well-equipped to speak another language and understand another culture through its own eyes.

I received my B.A. in 2009 from Clark University in Worcester, MA with a double major in International Relations and World Languages and Literatures. Before Buxton, I taught and tutored French, worked in a kitchen, worked as a technology consultant, and worked on a farm. I recently spent several months teaching fourth grade and HIV/AIDS education in Kibera, a peri-urban slum of Nairobi, Kenya, where kids tolerated my terrible attempts at pronunciation in Swahili. I am passionate about travel, nature, pancakes, and hanging out in the girls’ dorm at Buxton where I live with my two cats, Cameo and Spot.

 

Callie Henriksen  is our new Learning Support Specialist.

I graduated from Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York, with my Masters in School Counseling. During this time I completed my internship in the guidance department of a public high school on Long Island. My previous employment brought me to the Project STEPP program at East Carolina University, where I worked closely with freshman students with various learning disabilities. I then joined the Learning Support Center at Long Island University. I took time off to grow my family, and being a Miss Hall’s alum, I wanted to re-start my career back in the environment where I learned and grew the most—boarding school. Buxton is located in my hometown, so I am excited to come back to family, and grow as a professional in the prosperous environment that Buxton offers.

 

David Bluestein ’08 is teaching Chemistry, Algebra II, and Trigonometry- he is also living in the boys’ dormitory and helping with boys’ soccer.

Originally from Colorado, I have also lived in New York, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Vermont, and Indiana. As a child I heard about Buxton after struggling through public school for years. I attended Buxton as a student starting in the middle of the 2004-2005 school year, and eventually this campus felt like home. It was here that I learned to truly appreciate things like diversity, community, and of course, the importance of education.

After graduating from Buxton in 2008, I studied biochemistry at Earlham College (2012), and continued on to receive a M.A.T. from Earlham in 2014. In between my undergraduate and graduate programs, I worked in a medical research lab at National Jewish Health in Denver, Colorado. After obtaining my master’s, I worked as tennis pro in South Burlington, Vermont, and as a para-educator in the area as well. I have played a variety of sports throughout my life, and will gladly play pretty much any game or sport that I can! I also enjoy volunteering as an EMT with Shelburne Rescue in Vermont, which I will continue to do during school vacations. Aside from sports and volunteering, I love to spend my free time watching movies, cooking, and traveling. I am very excited to have the opportunity to share my experiences with such an incredible group of students and faculty!