Julia Habel Thompson (M.Ed. ’87 Soc Fdns) retired from teaching at Woodrow Wilson H.S. two years ago, where she was honored on two occasions as a Highly Effective teacher at the Kennedy Center. “Since then, I have moved on to teach of AP English, Honors 10 English, and ESL at Paul VI Catholic High School in Fairfax, a lovely ‘retirement’ job. I will return there next fall for year 3 and add English 4 as another class I will have taught there. I stay busy travelling in between my work and spent last summer in Cornwall researching family lore and locales, both helpful in the writing of my novel. I hope to return to Siberia to teach once I ‘fully retire’ and once the 14 + hours a day it takes to teach 6 classes becomes too much.”
Julia Habel Thompson's Curry Memory
“My travel-study ventures with a Curry school professor — 1st to England and later to Russia during the still then Communist era — were life changing. Later I returned to England to do graduate work in English at Oxford, and I have been to Russian four times. Most recently I lectured in English as a Foreign Language at Novosibirsk State University, and when/if I return, I hope both to teach again (possibly in Tuva) and to spend time with the numerous orphans in that region. I think few of us can fathom what it would be like not to have had any parent at a young page, and I hope to be a presence to some degree at some point.”