Long before Katie Mendenhall was solving problems with students at Dos Pueblos High School, she was performing on stages around the world as a professional cellist. The career that spanned 15 years and introduced her to audiences and classrooms.
“I taught at Kate school, the private school [of] art,” Mendenhall said. “I also taught at the Waldorf school locally, and I was a perfect adjunct professor at Westmont for eight years.”
As Mendenhall continued pursuing music, she soon realized that the career was “not meant to be,” and making ends meet became unstable.
“I kind of realized that being a freelance musician is financially very difficult,” Mendenhall said. “I thought, ‘Wow, I can make a certain amount of money every year, but I have to work seven days a week, and it is a hustle.’”
Mendenhall verbalized that the idea of teaching was already in the back of her mind, since her grandmother was also a teacher.
“I thought, ‘Well, I’ll go be a teacher,’ I also have a degree in physics, so I could be a math teacher,” Mendenhall said. “So that’s what I chose, and there’s such a high demand for math teachers, I thought, ‘I’m gonna get the math credential, because then I can go anywhere in the world, because everybody everywhere needs a math teacher.’”
However, Mendenhall said that if she did not teach math, she would teach a history course.
“There’s so much we can learn from history about what to do going forward and how we got here,” Mendenhall said. “There’s also so many incredible stories that you hear about, like how President Roosevelt did an exploration for weeks through the Amazon rainforest, mapping out the Amazon, … people don’t really know that.”
At DPHS, Mendenhall is one of two International Baccalaureate math teachers. One of her Year 2 IB math students, Silbur Irwin (12), said he appreciates the time that Mendenhall has spent making sure he understands.
“I thought it was really fun,” Irwin said. “I had her for IB math year one and now for year two, so it’s been really nice having her support.”
Outside of the classroom, Mendenhall partakes in various outdoor activities, including gravel biking and 13 day long hikes.
“I try to get hiking in locally, and then in the summers or during longer breaks, I will go to the Sierras or further to do some backpacking,” Mendenhall said. “I did almost a 200 mile hike in the Sierras. It was kind of a fish shape hike that involved some cross country travel, like hiking without trails, so you just are navigating using a compass and the features of the land.”
In Mendenhall’s class, students don’t just learn math—they also hear stories featuring mountains, snakes, and Mendenhall’s dog, Pepper.
