Ms. Kariotoglu, better known as “Ms. Kat”, is a funny teacher and fun to hang around with. Ms. Kat is also very helpful. She helps some of the students in the class with all sorts of assignments.
One quirky thing about Ms. Kat is that once you talk about one subject and she relates to it, she will go on a full rampage about how they should have done this or that, and all sorts of things. Personally, I love when she goes on these thought rampages; it’s funny, entertaining, hilarious, and she is one of the most well-spoken teachers that I know. Sometimes, in 8th period, she talks about how the book doesn’t go well with the movie and thinks it’s horrible and irritating. I could agree with 100%. There are a lot of things that not many students know about her, so here are a few interesting facts about Ms. Kat.
Many people might not know, but she actually is a licensed speech-language pathology assistant, and her job is to teach language, speech, and general communication skills, as well as executive functioning skills, to students. But her dream job when she was a kid was to help the deaf and to help nonverbal students. She loved the idea of improving their communication skills and how to speak. When she began college, she thought she wanted to do pharmacy studies instead, as she had a lot of medical experience in her family. During her sophomore year in college, she decided to switch majors and ended up finding speech therapy. And again, she’s really happy where she is.
When she graduated, she began working for a home health agency and later at a private clinic, where she worked with many special-needs kids and a few adults, targeting speech, language, and communication skills. In October, she decided it was time for a change. She wanted to work at a school, which is how Ms. Kat ended up in New Way. She is proud of being a speech-language pathology assistant. She worked very hard to be admitted to ASU’s speech-language pathology assistant program during her last couple of years of college, actively pursued this degree in the middle of the pandemic, and had to adapt to unforeseen changes that disrupted her schedule.
Now, for fun facts about Ms. Kat. She comes from a very big Greek family, and she loves to cook and bake. She also enjoys playing video games with her boyfriend, and she mostly uses her 3D printer to make a variety of fidgets, gadgets, and useful items. Her favourite Greek dish is chicken and hilopites, a chicken braised in tomato broth with small square pasta noodles, which her family brings home from Greece and calls hilopites. She also enjoys traditional pork gyros, and for dessert, she loves portokalopita (orange phyllo pastry) and kourabiethes (butter almond cookies covered in powdered sugar). Her favourite game to play with her boyfriend is League of Legends and World of Warcraft Classic Edition.
Ms. Kat is a great teacher, and every class she’s in, she is happy to have her, and everyone she talks to is happy to see her. Which is why I had an amazing time interviewing her, and I look forward to seeing her around campus.
