CONTRIBUTED PHOTO Abby Frieden, a former student teacher and long-term substitute at Franklin Elementary School, is returning on a full-time basis to teach first grade.

Abby Frieden may originally be from Decorah, but her passion for teaching was cultivated in Marshalltown.

During her time at Iowa State University, in the fall of 2024, Frieden got the opportunity to student teach, before completing her degree that December.

“I got placed with one of the kindergarten teachers at Franklin, Jenny Dugan, so I student taught there for part of my student teaching, and then I moved to a different school district for the next eight weeks, but then I actually came back here to be a full time sub at Franklin and a little at Anson (in January 2025), and I finished out the year with Hayley Pearse (also kindergarten) for her maternity leave,” she explained.

After her student teaching came to an end, Frieden attended a seminar at Iowa State where approximately 60 school districts were represented. While she enjoyed learning about the other locales, her eyes kept wandering back to the Marshalltown booth.

Now she returns to Franklin Elementary School in the role of first grade teacher, eager to reunite with the kids she got to know during her student teaching/subbing.

“It’s been super cool seeing the names on my roster because I already know them,” she added.

The decision to return to Marshalltown was an easy one to make, she says.

“I never really felt like I was a student teacher when I came here, especially at Franklin. I felt like I was just as much a teacher as everybody else, which was a really nice feeling,” she said. “I mean, you don’t know how you’re going to feel when you’re just still learning, and there’s so many experienced people here, but I always felt so welcomed and just always included. I felt like one of the staff, and that’s how I was always treated throughout my experience at Marshalltown.”

She and her husband Dane, who is also from Decorah, have settled in Nevada.

Frieden said she was eager to get into her classroom to make it her own.

“The second that I was able to get into my room, I had my mom come help me. My husband’s actually deployed right now in the Middle East, so my parents came to help me set up my classroom, which was super exciting,” she noted.

The young teacher said she was inspired to go into education because of her fifth grade instructor Mr. Delong. As a child, she struggled with math and “went through the motions” in third and fourth grade until she decided it was time to seek additional support.

“He was able to raise my test score more than anybody in my grade that year, and that was kind of my aha moment, where it was somebody just took the time to realize that I was just being pushed along, and that’s all it took for me to improve so much,” she noted. “So now, being a teacher, I’m able to recognize those students that I feel like may have already been pushed along, or could be pushed along like I was, which is a super cool experience.”

She said her incoming first graders get to learn new reading and math skills.

“They end the kindergarten year knowing how to read super short sentences. But in first grade, they’re really building their reading foundation. It’s a very important year for them to be reading, to start recognizing words without having to sound them out,” she said. “With math, just basic number sentences. They did a little bit of that in kindergarten, but now it’s just making it a little bit more difficult for them.”

She said she could understand parents being nervous about their children having a first year teacher. But she points out, recent graduates are often schooled in the latest teaching approaches.

“I think it’s going to be really cool for their kids to experience,” she said. “All the teachers in this building have been a first year teacher, and they are still amazing teachers now.”