After a five-year absence, Stephani Nummelin was ready to return to Chapel Hill. It had been years since she attended the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill for her graduate degree, and she had since moved to Boston, where her husband was completing his doctoral residency.
When the opportunity arose for her husband to take fellowship at UNC, Nummelin decided to apply for the open social studies position at Chapel Hill High School, and she now finds herself teaching AP Psychology and world history to Tiger students.
Nummelin’s passion for education began prior to her work as a teacher. The international politics major realized the importance of schooling while working for the National Endowment for Democracy in Washington D.C.
“Education seemed like the basis of all societal transformations that I wanted to see,” Nummelin said. “I realized that it’s a great way to contribute to the world; that was my plan: to follow in the footsteps of the teachers who really impacted me.”
While Nummelin is well-versed in history and international relations, her role as a psychology teacher came about unconventionally. Nummelin’s school in Boston was in need of a psychology teacher, and Nummelin—who was teaching history at the time but took an interest in psychology in college—agreed to take the position. She spent the summer preparing for the course, researching and exploring different topics and theories.
Nummelin’s desire for knowledge and her aspiration to positively impact her students directly translate into her teaching style.
“She makes the course interesting, and you can tell she’s one of the teachers who wants her students to succeed,” Aarya Potti, a junior psychology student, said.
Cady Cox, a sophomore psychology student, agrees with Potti’s sentiment. “I feel like she really wants us to learn,” Cox said.
Nummelin’s goal is to give her students the respect she desired in her teenage years, to empower their learning and to encourage them to be more independent and confident in their abilities. Nummelin describes her class as a “collaborative community” where students are encouraged to “grow together.”
Nummelin also emphasizes the life skills that can be found within her course. At a time when both the pandemic and public education have such a profound impact on students’ psychologies, Nummelin feels that she can impart knowledge that may help her pupils manage their mental health.
“The biggest thing that we’ve learned so far is the biological cause of anxiety,” Nummelin said, citing a recent lecture. “When we talk about how it’s treated, it helps students to realize that there are avenues to reduce it.”
Nummelin has taught her students about the impacts of the parasympathetic nervous system, which calms the human body during or after a stressful event. Nummelin’s students retained ways in which they can ignite this system in order to combat stress, such as breathing exercises and meditation.
Overall, Nummelin is not only eager to begin her new position at Chapel Hill High, but she is also eager to teach her “amazing students in person” now that remote learning has ended.
