It is another day, another class and another chapter in your “high school career,” but this year brings with it many fresh faces: Edwardsville has welcomed 10 new teachers to the high school.

This is the largest haul of new teachers in recent memory, so it is a given that most students at EHS will have some type of run-in with one of the 10 new teachers. One of the new teachers teaches orchestra, two teach French, two teach math, two teach applied tech and three teach English.

This is part 3 of 5 of the “New Year Brings New Teachers” series.

Here to “whip up” another school year are new applied-tech teachers Mrs. Nicole Peden and Mrs. Julia Tyler.

Mrs. Peden teaches Food and Nutrition and Child Development. Before teaching at EHS, she taught at Highland High School for five years, and before that, she was a stay-at-home mom for 10 years. “It’s as if I was ‘readying’ myself for what [courses] I was going to teach,” she said.

Like her three children, Mrs. Peden goes to school five days a week and enjoys the “interacting with students on a daily basis.”

“I like to see the success in and out of the classroom,” she said. Being the freshman class sponsor, she sees students “excelling” in an extracurricular activity.

While she adores the time spent at home with her family, Mrs. Peden loves to be an EHS teacher too. “I am so happy at EHS, with many thanks to Mrs. Holle and Ms. Tyler for being awesome colleagues,” she said.

Mrs. Tyler teaches Foods and Nutrition and Culinary Arts, having known since her own high school days that “these kinds of subjects are what I wanted to teach.” Before coming to EHS, she taught similar “home-ec” classes for years at Staunton High School. Already she feels gratified by her students.

“I love being able to interact with the students and see them grasp the concept that we are studying and apply that in their daily lives,” Mrs. Tyler said.

Transitioning to a couple thousand students at EHS from a couple hundred students at SHS was “a big change” for Mrs. Tyler, but it has been nonetheless a smooth transition.

“The dynamic of this school is a little bit different, but I feel that people like Mrs. Holle, the other Culinary Arts teacher, have helped me make the adjustment as effortless as possible,” Mrs. Tyler said.

When Mrs. Tyler is not in the classroom cooking food, she loves to be in her home cooking food. She also enjoys gardening and especially enjoys spending time with her family.