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Kane native enjoying world travels |
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Written by Publisher
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Saturday, 27 June 2009 |
Photo submitted
Chris Espin poses with her husband, Paul, and their twins, Marcus and Marika van den Broek.
By Mary Sirianni
Special to The Kane Republican
“Goede morgen, hoe bent u?”
Saying “good morning, how are you?” in Dutch are what Kane native Chris Espin has learned to say when entering a doctor’s waiting room in her new home of Leiben, in the Netherlands.
“You are supposed to greet the people waiting there, and they say good morning back, even if you have no idea who they are,” she said.
Adjusting to new customs is the hardest part of living abroad because such behavior is expected. Failing to perform such customs, not usually observed in the United States, may be perceived as rude, but Espin says “it's also fun to learn all of these new things.”
She and her husband, Paul van den Broek, and their children, seven-year-old twins Marcus and Marika, have lived in the Netherlands for the past year. She is a special education professor at Leiden University.
She says living abroad has allows her to acknowledge the good things about United States, as well as help her see where the country needs to improve.
Though she’s only been in Europe for a short time, she loves her new home.
“The country has a history of tolerance, just like the U.S. does, and the people here are bright and cheerful,” she said.
The daughter of Connie and Donald Espin, she and her siblings Mark, Julie, Jan, Joe and Pat attended Kane schools. She graduated in 1976 and went on to Slippery Rock University to earn a bachelor’s in special education and elementary education in 1980.
In addition to her teachers in the Kane school district, an opportunity to teach at the YMCA in Kane allowed her to discover her love of teaching at an early age.
While teaching gymnastics and swimming to younger children as a part of Ron Sanders’ "Leader's Club,” Espin decided teaching was her calling. She enjoyed teaching children how to do things, and, as she got older, she worked with students with disabilities, leading her to choose special education as her degree in college.
Espin taught for four years at Chesapeake High School in Maryland, working mainly with students with learning and behavior disabilities. She began graduate work at Penn State University in 1985 before completing her doctorate at the University of Minnesota in 1990. Espin taught at the University of Minnesota until 2008, when she accepted a position at Leiden University in the Netherlands.
As a university professor, she occasionally works with children but spends most of her time working with teachers of special-needs students, as well as doing research on ways to help students with learning and behavioral disabilities do better in schools.
Espin said the best part of her job is what drew her to the profession in the first place: working with students and seeing them learn. Though working in at a university gives her a lot of freedom to arrange her schedule around her family. The freedom of university life also means “you can conceivably work all the time” in the evenings and on weekends.
The long hours paid off for her, however, when she met her husband, Paul, also a professor, while they were both working late into the evening at the University of Minnesota.
They married in January 1993 in Minnesota. It was 10 degrees below zero.
Despite the tough schedules, they both love what they do.
“That's the best kind of job to have. We feel lucky to work in higher education.”
She gives a long list of teachers who inspired her to become an educator, including everyone from Sister Teresa at St. Callistus School, whom she credits with “teaching me not to cry every day in school,” to other instructors in subjects from history, science, physical education and geometry.
“My teachers inspired me to learn and made me love the topics they were teaching,” she said.
Outside of the classroom, Espin’s a number of family and close friends inspired her, particularly the women in her mother’s “Girl's Night Out Club,” who taught her about strength, laughter, and how to survive losses and pain. Having a large extended family in and around Kane helped keep her grounded. Having friends whose parents knew hers since childhood gave her a sense of “knowing where we came from,” which differed from living in Minnesota.
“I lived there for 23 years, but I never felt like I was home and that there were very few people who “knew” me. I didn't have that feeling of being grounded, of being known.”
Espin also credits her hometown with teaching her how to care about people, a trait not important in cities. In Minneapolis, she said she stopped to help people in need, often meeting with unexpected responses.
While driving, she saw a college student crash his bike and land on his head. She stopped to help and call an ambulance. When help arrived, the EMTs thought she had hit him with her car, not understanding any other reason she would have stayed at the scene. Shocked, she explained that she stopped, even though she didn’t know the cyclist, because “that's how we did things in a small town.”
“I think they still didn't believe me,” she said.
“Kane made me believe that people are good and can do good.”
Her children especially love coming to Kane each year. She said they are planning a visit in July but said her children are already talking about playing in the park or swimming at Twin Lakes.
Her son started preparing in May.
“‘Mom,’ he said, ‘we need to start packing now because we only have two months before we go to Kane!’”
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Last Updated ( Thursday, 29 October 2009 )
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