Photo courtesy of the Archives
After a 25-year career at Choate, Ms. Elizabeth Droel will retire from teaching. Over the years, Ms. Elizabeth Droel has taught a variety of math courses, and devoted herself to coaching a host of athletics, including field hockey, basketball, volleyball, running, and tennis. Likewise, her dorm-advising has taken her on a tour of campus, through Homestead, Bungalow, Further Cottage, Chapel, Archbold, and East Cottage.
Ms. Droel has cherished watching her students mature into thoughtful learners who are unafraid to help one another. “You walk into class, and you see the students are already there ahead of time working on some problems,” she said. “To see them get up and just talk to each other and help — that’s really nice because the students here are all very talented in lots of different ways and for them not to worry about ‘What if I tell somebody something?’ No — they want to share, they want to explain it, they want to help the other person out.”
“I like to see the growth of the students,” she said. “They’re afraid of making mistakes in the beginning, and then they’re willing to try anything. It’s a lot of fun.”
Throughout the decades she has spent at Choate, Ms. Droel has seen the School transform into a more receptive and unique community; the student body has diversified and various programs, such as the term-abroad program and computer science courses, have been introduced. “I think we’ve often tried not to just immediately jump to something new but to see where the interests were for the students that still had a good place in a high school curriculum,” she said. “We’ve tried to keep the curriculum living.”
It is clear that Ms. Droel appreciated all the small details and little interactions she had within the Choate community. “I’m going to miss the students. I’m going to miss the great support that facilities gives us. I’m going to miss the help of people in the dining hall. I’m going to miss people helping out in the library and about the sports field — people giving me my mail. I mean, there’s so many people making this community good. Just walking out the door and seeing how pretty the fields are — it’s a beautiful place.”
Before coming to Choate in 1993, Ms. Elizabeth Droel taught at the Naval Academy Preparatory School (NAPS) in Newport, Rhode Island. “It’s a postgraduate school, and I thought it would be fun to have kids from more than just one year of their education, to see how they progress or what they choose to do. I thought there would be more choices of things to teach,” she said.
Arjun Katechia ’19, one of Ms. Droel’s advisees and a student in her honors pre-calculus class, said, “One of the most defining aspects of her persona is that she’s very committed to her students both in and out of the classroom. She devotes a lot of time out of her schedule to students, and she’s just a really nice member of the community.”
What are Ms. Droel’s plans for the future? “I want to be open to different things,” she said. “It’s very full while you’re here, so I want to spend a little more time catching up with my family, get some more running miles in, and travel a little bit to see some friends.”
