“The spirit of intentional community is so real among the faculty who are here and we bring that to the students.”

That Jane Wanninger would one day become a teacher is no surprise.

“I used to make my sister, who was six years younger than me, do English class with me. I gave her vocabulary lists. We would have discussion questions,” Jane says. “I tried to make her write an essay and she wouldn’t. That was kind of the end of it, but I guess [teaching] came naturally to me.”

Reading did not. Jane says she was a late reader and remembers being frustrated in first grade, “but when it clicked, it clicked 100 percent.”

“I went from not being able to read a book to being the kind of kid bringing a book to the grocery store and carrying a second book in case I finished the first book,” she says. “So I think there is something in the fact I had to work so hard for it that meant once I hit my stride, it was such a pleasure.”

Jane earned a bachelor’s degree with honors in English from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2007, a master’s degree in English literature from Vanderbilt University in 2008, and a doctorate in English literature with a graduate certificate in gender studies from Vanderbilt in 2012. She has been in the English Department at Loomis Chaffee since 2022. She was an associate professor of literature at Bard College at Simon’s Rock in Great Barrington, Mass., from 2016 to 2022, and also taught at Vanderbilt.

“The best teachers love what they teach and are able to share that, mirror that for students,” Jane says.

“And they love their students,” she continues. “I know that not all students are going to love literature the way I do, and that's OK, but I think it is so important to see [teachers] who show you what it is to love a kind of learning. ... I think it makes it more exciting, and I also think it can help students find the things they love.”

Another thing Jane loves is the community at Loomis Chaffee. In 2018, Jane and her husband, John Morrell, the director of writing initiatives at Loomis, became the parents of twins, a boy and a girl. They moved closer to Jane’s job at Bard. But they came back for the 2022-2023 school year. John had been the head of the English Department at Loomis from 2015 to 2018 before working at Bard in various roles.

“We were thinking about the next phase of life,” she said. “We realized we wanted to be here. This was a community [where] we wanted to raise our kids. ... The spirit of intentional community is so real among the faculty who are here and we bring that to the students.”

Jane says the English Department has many talented teachers, so she tries to support them where she can “and celebrate the fact that our students are going to encounter a lot of different, passionate teachers across their time here.”

Jane also marvels at the students she encounters, when they get here and when they leave as “creative, independent thinkers and writers.”

For Jane, reading in the backyard on a spring day with the kids playing outside is a recipe for relaxation.

“I have always loved stories and think there is nothing better than getting lost in a book,” she says. “I think I started as someone who loves stories, though now I realize that to read something academically is different than how I read it for pleasure, but I came to literature as a pleasure reader.”

Away from the job if she’s not reading a book, you might find her doing a jigsaw puzzle. She enjoys ceramics, especially making functional pottery. The mug on her desk is an example.

Holidays are a time to make rolls with the kids from Jane’s grandmother’s recipe. Not just any recipe. One that earned her grandma a blue ribbon at the Wisconsin State Fair. Jane enjoys cooking, but with any 7-year-olds that can be a challenge.

“One likes pizza, the other doesn't. One likes tacos, the other doesn’t. The one thing I make that they both will eat, mysteriously, is a beef stew,” Jane says.

Puzzle solved.