Has anybody else wondered how Mrs. Forsthoefel is doing? How is it going with her baby? For her freshmen students, we had such little time to get to know her and see what she’s like. She came into the school year preparing to have the baby and she left so soon. Upperclassmen who had her in years past are also probably curious about how life is for one of our favorite math teachers. Well, good news! She is doing well, and her kids are adorable.
We had a chance to get in touch with her and to see what the off time from school has been like for her. We asked various questions to get a feel of what she has been up to with all of her free time.
One of the questions that we asked was how it was going with her baby? She responded with a very enthusiastic, “Everything is going really well! We’re both healthy and excited to celebrate the holidays.” With all the time off I’d bet she is having a lot of fun with getting to know her baby. When going on a long break sometimes we get overwhelmed with all the free time that we have. When having a baby, you have so many things that need to get done because they are so demanding.
Another question that we asked her was what her favorite part of being on maternity leave was. Her response was “ [spending] so much time with both of my kids. It has been really special getting to see Charlie be a big brother to Martha.” Her son Charlie is 2 and a half and is having so much fun being a big brother to his baby sister Martha.
One of our big questions was about the difficulty of managing her time while being a teacher and having a newborn. She has been a teacher for a long time, so she has been in the game long enough to know what she needs to do to help her students reach the academic goals that they need to. But being on maternity leave she said that she has been focused on her baby and putting her and her baby’s health as her number one priority.
Filling in for her is Mrs. Sherman. She’s been a wonderful help to us students with teaching us and helping us grow our minds and to be the best students that we can be. We wanted to ask Mr. F is she’s been teaching while she has been on her break? She said, “Luckily, I have been able to just focus on my family during maternity leave. Ms. Sherman and my coworkers have been wonderful at giving me this time at home without worrying about school. I am sure it will be hard to manage my time once I return in January, but I love my family and Harrison. I will make it work!” We are all so glad that she is happy to come back to Harrison and continue to teach us as we near the busy time of state testing.
As everybody knows the weather has changed and the amount of people getting sick has gone up. Little babies are so prone to getting sick, but it sounds like Martha is doing great! “My least favorite thing about maternity leave has been the start of flu season! I worry about my daughter getting sick at such a young age. But she has been healthy so far!”
It is wonderful that Martha is doing so well!
She’s done this leave once before, for her son Charlie, but we wondered if it’s harder the second time around. So we asked her was if she thought that it was going to be hard to come back to teaching after being gone for so long. She doesn’t seem to be worried about coming back, stating “ I am hoping that it won’t be too hard coming back to school. I will need to get back into “teacher shape”, but I am looking forward to seeing all of my students!”
We are so excited for her to come back and get to hear all the stories about her baby Martha. We can’t wait to greet her with open arms!
