In education, collaboration is key, and for newlyweds Kaitlyn and Colton Gronewold, it’s also the foundation of their relationship. As a business teacher and a math teacher in the same district, they’re shuffling their personal and professional lives in a manner that many teachers and students find impressive to witness.
When students looked at their schedules to find their classes for the year, some of them realized they had a Gronewold. The name is new to GHS, but it’s gaining familiarity quickly. The couple got married on June 29, 2024, when they were both 24 years old. Now at 25, the Gronewolds work a floor away from each other at GHS as two of the newest additions to the building’s staff, and they are thrilled to be teaching here.
“We’re both really excited to be in the same place at the same time,” Kaitlyn said. “We always heard great things about Gretna, and even though it is getting to be a bigger district, it still feels like a small town. We are more than happy to be a part of the community.”
The couple has found that being married to each other while working in the same school is incredibly difficult, especially since keeping a person’s professional and personal life separate is nearly impossible when the boundaries between home and work are blurred so easily.
“It’s hard for me not to go see her all of the time, because I just want to talk to her, and she’s my best friend,” Colton said. “She makes me a better person, and I’ve learned that I can’t slouch off when she’s here because she holds high expectations for me. It’s great to be in the same district, and we’re still working on how to keep work at work and home at home.”
The Gronewolds shared their long-term goals about how they want to influence the GHS family. Both Kaitlyn and Colton said that relationships with their students and their co-workers are the most important part of their experience. They want to make sure that every student feels loved and heard.
“We just want to impact people,” Colton said. “We want to build relationships with kids, that’s a big thing for both of us. Yes, teaching is important, but I think that both of us feel like the reason that we do this is to build a relationship with the kids.”
The Gronewolds are also making a good first impression on students, including Cody Malone, a freshman at Gretna High School who is enrolled in both of the Gronewolds’ classes.
“I think that they understand how kids want to be taught, so they make it more interesting with a lot of different activities,” Malone said.
The Gronewolds have also made a great first impression with their fellow teachers, including Sarah Benzel, a math teacher and Colton’s mentor, who has communicated her excitement about Colton’s teaching styles and techniques. She said he teaches with personality and humor, and she admires that, especially when hearing about how much he is appreciated.
“Sometimes you get people in math who are dry and deliver the lesson but don’t really have a good sense of humor, and he most definitely does,” Benzel said. “He’s got a great personality. I figured that the kids would love him, and it’s already confirmed.”
Colton is a math teacher who instructs Geometry CP, Algebra II CP and Algebra II. He attended the University of Nebraska-Lincoln to pursue a career in teaching and to learn all of the rights and responsibilities of educating children. Before becoming a math teacher in Gretna, Colton student-taught at Lincoln Southeast High School with his now-wife, Kaitlyn.
“Math can be really hard, and you can’t judge a kid by their grades,” Colton said. “The best antidote to that is relationships; kids don’t care what you know until they know that you care.”
Colton, although he loves the job and all that comes with it, never expected to be a teacher. At Beatrice High School, where he spent his teenage years, he took a placement test with 34 options of careers that would fit him and his personality. At the end of the test, Colton had education as his 34th suggestion, which didn’t stop him from becomin an educator.
Outside of the math classroom, he has also been really excited to be involved in other aspects of the school community. Colton himself has decided to help coach the esports team and has had a lot of fun learning about the kids down in the lab.
“Meeting the kids down in the lab has been so fun, getting to know all of their personalities and seeing their relationships is amazing,” Colton said.
Just up the stairs, his wife brings a different kind of number game to life, this time, in the business classroom, where savings and loans are all the rage. Kaitlyn teaches Introduction to Business, Personal Finance and Information Technology. Kaitlyn is a Nebraska native who went from excelling at Bellevue High School to graduating from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln to pursue her teaching career. Her teaching style is something that most students can admire with real-life examples during lessons and project-based test grades.
“I am a very project-based teacher, and I feel that is where students thrive,” Kaitlyn said. “I want them to have a more hands-on experience. The more realistic the better.”
While Kaitlyn loves that kind of teaching, , she has many beliefs about how students should be taught. Using personal experience, she said, Kaitlyn can maximize the reality of a class’s teachings and how serious these lessons are for the students when they leave home.
“I use my own experiences most often to help the kids,” Kaitlyn said. “I just try to be an open book. I’ve realized that showing them times that I was wrong and giving them my recommendations helps the most.”
Although making sure that her students receive the best education possible is one of her top priorities, so are the relationships that she has with them. Kaitlyn said she believes that the only way to understand how students learn is to build genuine relationships with every one of them.
“I care a lot about the kids in my room, and I want to build relationships with all of them,” Kaitlyn said. “I really hope to have a reputation as a teacher as someone that kids feel comfortable coming to about anything.”
