Math teacher McKenna Shaw shares her love for everything outdoors

New mathematics teacher McKenna Shaw recently moved to Minnesota all the way from the big city of New York. After 5 years of teaching, Shaw is an experienced and inspired teacher who wants the best for her students. She found SPA because of her family’s connections to the city, “I have family in Minneapolis and have always been interested in living in a place where I could get food at three in the morning, but also cross country ski. So I started looking for school, what drew me to SPA was the same things that I liked about my school in New York. I loved hearing about the Harkness tales and seeing how much of the school was driven by the students.” These qualities that SPA possesses, drew Shaw to apply and become a teacher here for the foreseeable future.

Outside of school Shaw loves her dog and her plants, “I’m obsessed with my dog Max, he is a labradoodle and he’s a rescue. I also became a crazy plant lady during COVID, so I’m always picking up new plants.” She can also often be found outdoors, “I love all things outdoors, I love to rock climb, I love to ski, I love to kayak, I love to go camping. All that stuff”. She likes to balance her academic life with her personal life by engaging in many of these activities.

Shaw remembers her high school years which were filled with many classes and many laughs, “When I was a sophomore, I took a computer skills class where we learned to type, me and my friend Carly would always finish our assignments early and so we used to spend the rest of our time just watching clips of The Office online. If you ever want to start a conversation with Shaw talking about The Office is a good place to start.