Faces of Green Spring
by Ivy Sinaiko
If you haven’t met Teegan, Green Spring’s new senior interpreter, you have something very pleasant to look forward to. Her job at Green Spring, which she began this spring, includes overseeing the youth/family and adult education programs, which seems appropriate because she discovered Green Spring Gardens when attending our Winter Lecture Series.
Teegan, Green Spring’s new senior interpreter.Teegan is a New Englander, raised in Salem, Massachusetts, one-half mile from Nathaniel Hawthorne’s House of the Seven Gables. Her undergraduate college degree is in design, and her master’s degree is in education. Her previous jobs have included being a math and science teacher in an elementary school and being an assistant principal in both elementary and kindergarten through eighth grade schools. During her time as a teacher in Massachusetts, she was chosen as one of four elementary science teachers statewide to revise the state’s science standards, an exercise she found absorbing and challenging. Here at Green Spring, she has brought this experience to bear, working to align the school field trip scripts with Virginia’s Standards of Learning.
Interaction with people—the Green Spring staff, adults and children who visit the gardens, FROGS members—is what makes her job enjoyable to Teegan. She sees Green Spring as a community with many moving parts, all of which are interesting. She is working on a team spearheaded by Susan Eggerton to update Green Spring’s interpretive plan, which deals with the message Green Spring shares with the public about the site. This effort includes developing plans for how Green Spring can best connect with and serve neighbors, underserved populations, and local schools.
On her own time, Teegan has many hobbies. She loves to sew, especially making costumes, an interest that goes back to her days as playing the “Fairy Godmother” in a costume shop during college. She also does leather work. She is quite a creative lady!
We are very lucky to have a person with so much experience, talent, energy, and enthusiasm on the Green Spring staff. Welcome, Teegan! I hope to have many conversations with you in the future.
