Teacher Feature: Meg Harms

It’s quite common to find adults who claimed to have wanted to be an astronaut or professional sports player when they were younger— but in Mrs. Meg Harm’s case, a teacher was what she wanted to be from day one. Since kindergarten, Mrs. Harms stated that she’d “help friends with homework and tutor younger students”.

For elementary and middle school, Mrs. Harms went to a PK-12 school similar to Brownell. “Middle school was ok,” she said, “but I went through a lot of the growing pains of outgrowing friends I’d known for years”. In high school, Mrs. Harms started to find the world of STEM (especially science and math) and also joined softball.

After she graduated high school, Mrs. Harms went to Princeton University for Civil Engineering. “I experienced a lot of external pressure not to pursue education”, she said, and ended up getting a Princeton master’s degree in Civil Engineering.

In graduate school, Mrs. Harms realized that her labs and research was high stress. “However,” she stated, “I also got to teach my first classes around that time and it brought me a lot of joy”. Sadly, when her father passed away in 2010, she became dedicated to finding a job that would let her find joy. That’s when Mrs. Harms moved to a boarding school to serve as a physics teacher, dorm supervisor, and softball coach.

In 2016, Mrs. Harms got married to her husband who got a job as a professor at UNL/UNO. She researched schools in the area and Brownell caught her eye, 18 months later she took their offer up for a physics teacher.

Mrs. Harms plans to stay at Brownell for a while as her kids graduate in 2036 and 2038. She hopes to grow STEM programs both inside and outside of BT. Here’s what the amazing mentor and teacher had to say to current students: “Remember that your happiness matters, too. Too often we focus on compensation and prestige when it comes to a job, but you will be living your life for decades to come. Do something that brings you joy, and remember that those giving you advice will never have to be the ones living with that career.”