Salutations!  My name is Leanne Soucek, and I’m truly thankful to be on a campus where there is such a sense of welcome and honoring for each person’s unique gifts and learning styles.  Welcome to Arapahoe Ridge!  The following is a brief list of highlights from my fabulous life, education and career.  I’ll start from the younger days and wind up with the present:

• Seeing castles, cobbled streets, riding Olympic jumpers; eating Wienerschnitzel and Brodchen in Germany (age 9); learning to speak German.
• Swimming for hours, building sand castles and climbing in the grand Banyan trees on Waikiki Beach, and going barefooted to school because we lived in Hawaii while my dad was in Vietnam (ages 11-12)
• Traveling to Corregidor Island in the Philippines to see the site of the Bataan Death March from WWII, while my dad was in Vietnam for his second tour of duty (ages 14-15)
• Riding a Western style pony in the grand entry of the Palo Alto County, Texas rodeo in 10th grade in Mineral Wells, Texas, where I learned what a “goat roper” was!  (I did not qualify!)
• Graduating high school from Tehran American School in Iran.  Our senior class trip was to “Bandar Pahlavi,” a lovely beach resort on the Caspian Sea, where we could watch the twinkling lights of Russian trawlers at night.  My first (very embarrassing) ski experiences were in the mountains of Iran in the town of Dizin.

I grew up all over the world, 20 moves in 20 years.  Needless to say, school was challenging at times, because I was almost always the “new kid.”  Learning from grade to grade in so many different places left me with “gaps,”especially in math (This was not, certainly, because I read Nancy Drew behind my math book in 3rd grade!)  From that experience, as well as being the only Caucasian student in my class in Hawaii, I learned sensitivity to many cultures.  It is my belief that respect and mutual learning are the most important values for success in education and career.  In these myriad schools and circumstances, no matter the class, the students or the country, the experience of kindness or shame, the blessing or cursing of my value as a human being, is what I most remember.  I was put in the “dummy math class” (and simultaneously the advanced English class) in 5th grade.  Isn’t it interesting that I went on to become an English teacher? 

I have taught in wonderfully diverse schools – a day treatment program for Aurora Mental Health and perhaps my most challenging and favorite experience, a juvenile-diversion wilderness program in the mountains west of Denver.  Students (and staff!) learned wilderness survival skills, backpacking and camping for more than 30 days in the wilderness, even in 18” of snow).  Backpacking my lessons and materials for eight days at a time was truly amazing, as was climbing 14ers with inner-city kids from “juvie.”  I’ve taught in Special Ed, in Language Arts and in Social Studies.  What a joy it is to combine a consuming love for books with an ardent desire to help others to love reading, no matter what kind of book they might love.  Thank goodness for students who share books with me, such as Monster or To Destroy You is No Loss.  I love that I’m learning about cars, computers, I-Pods, paintball, etc., because my students are my best teachers.

In addition to teaching, I regularly practice yoga, work out at the gym, love vegetarian cooking, delight in African and Middle Eastern hand-drumming, and adore cycling, hiking, singing and films.  I love Colorado, because we get to connect with such beauty in creatures and terrain. I look forward to getting to know you, and I’m so glad that you’re here!  Again, welcome to Arapahoe Ridge.