The goodbye that bothers math teacher Nicole Koenig most about leaving the upper school is that she’ll be leaving its community members.
“I will … miss the students, and my colleagues, all of them have been absolutely wonderful,” she said. “I love the kids. They’ve been the highlight of my job and they’ve really made it worth it for me.”
Something Koenig will not miss about St. Paul is the snow. She has been surrounded by winter weather all her life, having lived in Buffalo, Leavenworth and Laurence in Kansas, and now the Twin Cities area, but has never gotten used to the inclement weather.
“I will not miss scraping the ice off of my windshield,” she said. “As a kid, obviously, I didn’t drive … I loved it, as a kid. As an adult, no.”
Koenig has taught for three years in the upper school, and although departing is bittersweet, she’s excited about what the future will bring. She plans to join her mother in Kansas, where she will teach at The Barstow School near her mother, a social welfare professor.
“I’m excited,” Koenig said. “We’re basically best friends.”
No matter what state she’s in, Koenig will keep her memories at the Randolph campus with her.
“I’m excited about where I’m going and the people I’ll be with, but this has been a really great environment,” she said. “I wish I could just take the school and bring it with me, to be honest. … It’s just a really nice place to be and a really nice place to work.”

Upper school English teacher Robert van Vliet is departing from SPA after many years of teaching, and has had a strong influence on many of his students.
This semester, van Vliet taught multiple periods of the Literature of Monstrosity elective as well as English 9. Junior Chloe Kovarik, a student in one of van Vliet’s Literature of Monstrosity classes, finds his teaching style unique and appreciates his ability to keep the class engaged.
“He has a very interesting teaching style. He’s very hands-on,” Kovarik said. “He’s very engaging when we talk about what happened … It’s a very engaged discussion [and] he’s … good at making sure it stays on task.”
After teaching a variety of classes at the upper school, van Vliet will depart for new beginnings at the end of the semester.

As science teacher Eleanor Wriedt’s time at St. Paul Academy and Summit School comes to an end, they look back on their upper school experiences with fondness. A favorite memory of theirs was the 2026 junior retreat at Camp Courage, a unique experience for them.
“Getting to see … students interacting as a whole outside of … small classroom dynamics is really cool to see. And getting to talk about things beyond my content area was interesting, because obviously I hear a lot about chemistry and [biology] and science, but … getting to hear student perspectives on … life, I think has been a highlight,” she said.
One of the biggest factors in shaping Wriedt’s time at SPA into a positive one is their colleagues, and how welcoming the faculty has been since their first day at the school.
“It speaks to who the faculty are as a whole. … They’re interdisciplinary by nature,” she said. “There’s so much curiosity about who people are, kind of within other spaces in the school. … [It] makes it so there’s a lot of cohesion and a lot of inclusivity.”
Wriedt has had an impact on students, too. Junior Jack Bettenburg, for example, is inspired by Wriedt’s authenticity.
“They’re so authentically themselves that it inspires me and so many other people to also authentically be themselves, and that is just such a superpower in teaching,” he said.
As they prepare to depart, Wriedt hopes to illustrate how grateful they have been for the school’s positive community, and not only faculty, but students’ willingness to have open arms for its new members.
“It’s easy, as faculty, to be like, ‘hi, hello, new adult.’ But I think as students, as a collective, everybody has been so excited to meet the new faculty,” she said. “It’s been very heartwarming. So I guess a message of gratitude is my last leave-off.”