In 2005, Michelle Traeger, beloved economics teacher in Edina High School, began her teaching journey following a career working for Best Buy. Her real world knowledge and experience accompanied by her love for teaching combined to create a class not only accessible, but engaging to any student taking economics. 

“I guess that was a big ‘aha’ for me, when I realized that students, when they walked in the door at the beginning of the semester, most of them were like, ‘I know nothing about econ,’” she said. “And then by the end of the semester it was like, ‘Wow, that actually makes sense.’”

Through projects like the end of year personal budgeting research—a project where students are assigned to lay out a plan for their finances after high school—Traeger was able to simplify abstract economic concepts by making them applicable to each student’s lives. “I think it goes back to making it real and making it connect to life. And I think that one of my takeaways was having a student tell me they were a senior and they were graduating and they said to me ‘Out of all the projects I’ve ever done at Edina, this project was the most useful,’” she said. “That really resonated with me because…I could be like ‘This is what’s going on, this is why it’s going on,’ and you see how things are connected. So everything I was doing, it felt like it was real.”

Being brought into the field of teaching was not by chance. Traeger had been passionate about teaching since she was little and continued to hold onto it throughout her years at EHS. “When I was a little kid, my mom would go garage-sailing, so she would find chalkboards and little tiny desks and I would sit in my garage and I would teach to no one,” Traeger said. “I was literally all by myself.” She reasoned that her love of teaching must have come from the wonderful teachers she had had growing up as well as the tradition in her family of working in education. The transition to teaching therefore seemed natural following a brief stint in the world of business. “I went business for about 10 years and I loved that. But then [teaching] just called to me and it was like ‘Oh no, I think I really want to try this,’” she said. 

Shortly after her first day of teaching, she realized it was the place for her. Upon giving an icebreaker that included finding out who was new to the school—at the time South View Middle School—she attempted to allude to her students that it was her first day as well. Eventually, she outwardly revealed this to them and one of her students responded with “You don’t look new.” “I immediately thought ‘I am totally in the right profession, this is absolutely how I want my days to roll,’” she said. “I want[ed] that kind of unfiltered, you can’t make this stuff up.”

Though she’s sad to be leaving the district where she has spent all 18 years of her teaching career, Traeger noted that she is sure Edina will remain a beacon of learning long past her departure. “I know that there’s a lot of noise and I don’t dismiss that, but I always felt like I was able to go into the classroom and teach. That, I really really feel like, never ended [or] changed,” she said. “And that’s a big piece of why I love[d] the job so much, to be honest.”

This piece was originally published in Zephyrus’ print edition on May 18, 2023.