The room is silent. Students are reading their copies of Fahrenheit 451 while Mrs. Kelli Hanes is finishing attendance. Some time passes and Mrs. Hanes arranges a large circle in the room to begin class discussion on the part of the book they just read. She speaks loud and with honesty in order to get the kids out of their comfort zone and comfortable.
English teacher Mrs. Hanes is a well-liked teacher in Hamilton Southeastern High School due to her bluntness and sarcasm, she adds a lot of comfort to her class rooms. But what most students don’t know about her is that her, her daughter, and her husband all lived in England from 1999 to 2001.
Mrs. Hanes’ husband works for a company called Pilkington, the largest automobile glass company in the world. His job often has him traveling around, and when the company needed him to move to England, his wife and daughter packed up and they were off!
When asked if she would go back to England, Hanes gave an enthusiastic “Hell yeah!”
The Hanes family went all around Europe, going to about 20 different countries while over there, visiting a bunch of museums, World War II memorials, and even seeing Britney Spears in concert in Wales. Their daughter, Erika Hanes, who is now a graduate student at DePaul was eleven when the family moved there and 14 when they left. Erika was the only American at her school. She went to middle school in England which is called 6th form, which is kind of like American high school with grades six through eleven all at the same school.
“The first two years, I didn’t feel like I had real friends. I had people that I hung out with, people who invited me to things and who ate lunch with me, but I didn’t feel like I had a solid group of friends.” Erika says when asked what the worst thing about living in England was. “It was hard to adjust, I was the only American in the school, so I stuck out like a sore thumb and it took me a hot minute to acclimate to the cultural differences.”
Although she had trouble in the beginning, Erika became well adjusted in her final year there and made best friends that she has managed to stay in touch with today. Another good experience from living there was the beautiful views and how it was the richest green grass she has ever seen in her life.
The Hanes family lived in a small brown house next to a castle. It was named the Warwick Castle (pronounced War-ick) and any time friends or family visited the family that’s where they would take them to experience the gorgeous and old historic building.
As Mrs. Hanes’ daughter rode down roads she described seeing people’s yards where “the grass was just that shade of green and there would be bright white sheep scattered across the fields and it looked little cotton puffs in a emerald green ocean.
While in England, Mrs. Hanes was not able to work because of complications with the visa policy, so she had plenty of time to travel around and really get to know the UK. From experiencing all the museums and little shops and stores, Mrs. Hanes says something that really stuck out to her was how many kinds of sugars and flours there were, “too many” she says laughing.
The family returned to America 2001. While in England, Mrs. Hanes’ teaching license actually expired, so she had to take two more online classes to renew her license and has been teaching ever since. Her husband still works with Pilkington and continues to travel. The English experience made the spontaneous Mrs. Hanes the teacher who most students now call one of their favorites.
