Did you ever wonder why Mrs. Neilson uses her Sponge Bob keychain, or what she likes to do in her spare time? Well, we sat down with her to find out these, and some other burning questions we had for her.

The three of us sat down in her classroom, and we started things off with our first question. “We always wondered why you had a Sponge Bob keychain, of all of them, why this one?”

Mrs. Neilson sat back in her chair for a moment before laughing, and telling us it would be a long story. We reassured it didn’t matter, and she told us her answer. “Our class had a gift exchange at Christmas, and one of the students opened his gift and he didn’t like the keychain. I spotted it and told him I would trade him a bag full of candy bars for the keychain. I had always wanted something to hold my keys on, and it was bright yellow.”

We all shared a laugh and continued with the questions. “Tell us how you became involved in art”. With a short sigh, she launched into her reply.

“When I was a child, I loved to draw and paint. As a teenager I became involved in teaching art to younger kids. It was addicting and I decided that I wanted to teach.”

She replied with, “I just love art.” It’s interesting that Mrs. Neilson now loves teaching Social Studies even more than teaching art.

“Tell us why you moved to Strathmore to teach. Why do you like Strathmore so much?”

It was more like two questions, but she didn’t mind and had no trouble answering this one. Without hesitation she responded “I had always wanted to settle in to one school and one community. With declining enrollment, this was not working where I lived. I phoned a good friend, who was teaching in Cochrane to checkout Strathmore. She said it was a very nice prairie town. I sent in my resume and got the job.  What do I like about Strathmore? I loved the Rocky Mountains and had always wanted to come see them. I also love the clean air and good water on the prairies. Strathmore is the best.”

We then asked her a question that really puzzled us. “Why do you like teaching junior high (grade 8), so much?” Mrs. Neilson just laughed at the confused looks on our faces and replied.

“Grade 8 is my favorite year to teach because I find that students’ minds can be inspired to new levels of seeing things and maturing at this age, yet they still have amazing levels of creativity and energy.” Letting out a short laugh, she went on to say that “Grade 8 is fun.” We just laughed and continued on.

We had come to our final question. Not the most original, but it was still worth asking. “What do you like to do in your spare time?”

She smiled, and replied without a lot of hesitation. We could tell she had answered this question more than once. “I love to spend time with my family and grandchildren. I also love to hike. I go hiking a lot in the summertime. I also love to go on motorcycle rides with my husband. I also enjoy swimming.” And with that, we were finished our interview. She had answered all of the questions we had for her, and we walked away satisfied with the new knowledge we had about Mrs. Neilson.