“Hey Adrienne, how are you doing today?”
“Living the dream as always,” she said.
Adrienne Cataldo, a teacher and newspaper sponsor at Portage High School, has had a positive outlook on her life even before moving to Valparaiso seven years ago with her husband of 13 years and four children.
Ahead of making her way up to the Region, Cataldo received three teaching degrees while attending universities in Saint Louis, Mo. Then, she took her skills with her as she taught high school freshmen and juniors in the suburbs of the city for 12 years. Then, Cataldo and her family decided to pack up and move to the 219 as she took a few years away from teaching to care for her growing family.
When the pandemic hit, Cataldo’s husband was furloughed. As a way to help, she applied for and accepted her current job at Portage High School last January, teaching seniors and dabbling in journalism classes.
“Education is definitely different between the two states,” Cataldo said. “It’s not spectacularly comparable because I started teaching during the middle of the pandemic, so it was a lot.”
Aside from the move and the pandemic, teaching at Portage High School has been a new adventure for Cataldo since she has only taught younger high school students.
“Seniors are interesting because they are adults,” Cataldo said. “A lot of them are 18 years old, they have jobs, they have cars, and they have relationships. They also have future plans, and it’s really cool to see those plans develop.”
Cataldo has also made some changes to her grading and deadlines while at Portage as a way to create calamity amid the chaos.
“I realized when everybody is holding themselves together with two hands and scotch tape, sometimes I need to be a little bit more lenient with myself and my students about getting things done and surviving as humans in addition to learning,” Cataldo said.
Cataldo was also offered to oversee the newspaper at Portage High School, which she says is in the middle of a transition along with the rest of the publications department.
“We are trying to determine the best way to distribute the newspaper,” Cataldo said. “So far, the publication has a collection of articles to publish, but have not yet due to the transition.”
Despite the roadblocks, Cataldo is still very excited to see what the future holds for the newspaper, and she is proud of her small staff as they try to reach its goal of one newspaper a month.
“I have two students on the newspaper staff right now – which is very small – but they are diligent workers,” Cataldo said. “They’ve written several articles about events that have happened throughout the school year, so as soon as we have a way to distribute the newspaper, we’ll get those published.”
Outside of the high school, Cataldo enjoys cooking. It’s a hobby she and her family picked up at the beginning of the pandemic and have stuck with ever since.
“During the lockdown, we had a cooking lesson every day as a way to fill the time,” Cataldo said.
She also loves doing crafts and attending community festivals with her children.
Cataldo is also a volunteer for Hannah’s Hope, “a Northwest Indiana non-profit that provides developmental equipment to kids with special needs and connects families by making life and communities more accessible,” as shared on the organization’s website.
One piece of advice Cataldo would like to leave readers with is to always make the best decision for you, regardless of societal or peer pressures.
“You need to be comfortable with your decisions, and while people can give you advice, it is irrelevant if you are uncomfortable with the decision you are making,” Cataldo said. “You need to do what is best for you.”