“A beautiful voice and a phenomenal bell-kick.” “The 2023 four-square champion with a heart of gold.” Mrs. Clare Von Hertsenberg is the Middle School Theatre and Public Speaking teacher, the co-director of the middle school musical, this edition’s Teacher of the Month.
Mrs. Von Hertsenberg grew up in Radnor, PA. She attended Radnor Middle and High School. Growing up she was also a competitive Irish step dancer and was actively involved in Model UN. Later, she earned her BFA at NYU Tisch and MFA at Columbia University and went on to work in the performing arts industry. During her 20s, Mrs. Von Hertsenberg lived in New York and acted professionally. She was also a teaching artist and recounts her experiences, recalling: “I would go into lots of different public and private schools and teach specific Drama Residencies for a few months at a time.” During the pandemic, she moved back to Pennsylvania and worked as a virtual coach at AIS. A few years later, with the help of Mr Savar, she applied to be our Middle School Theatre teacher—and succeeded!
Mrs. Von Hertsenberg has been teaching at AIS for four years, but she has been teaching for eight years total. She had always known her passion lay with teaching, so she pursued an MFA. Although she herself did not attend an all-girls school, Mrs. Von Hertsenberg wishes that she had that experience growing up and enjoys teaching at Agnes Irwin because she believes that “girls are very free to be who they are here, and it’s celebrated to be yourself at AIS.” Through her teaching, Mrs. Von Hersenberg wants to bring students the opportunities she did not have in middle school. She recalls, “In my middle school, I did not have theater as a class. In fact, my school didn’t really have any theater opportunities until 8th grade. I wanted to find a position that would allow me to be for middle school students what I so desperately needed,” she says. Her love for theater is driven by the beauties of “storytelling,” which “connects humans and has been around since the beginning of time. She says that “stepping into another person’s shoes is an exercise in empathy.”
Outside of the classroom, Mrs. Von Herstenberg loves to read, cook, work out and listen to music. Some of her favorite artists are Joni Mitchell, Crosby Stills Nash and Young, and Paul Simon. Her biggest inspirations are her parents, who always encouraged her passion for theater and were her biggest cheerleaders. She also looks up to Dame Judy Dench for her “illustrious career and her general awesomeness as a woman who works in classical theater.” Over the summer, Mrs. Von Hertsenberg acted in a short film with a production company in Philly. She also spends a lot of her summers performing at a theater in Vermont, called Saint Michael’s Playhouse. In the future, Mrs Von Hertsenberg wants to keep teaching, have a family, and continue to act.
Mrs. Von Hertsenberg has an important piece of positive and encouraging advice for middle and upper school students, advising that “Things might feel really hard sometimes, but you can and will get through it. Stay true to yourself. It’s cool to care.”
Today Mrs Von Hertsenberg is an integral part of the Agnes Irwin community. One student said, “We were both new [to AIS] the same year and she was the best to talk to about being new…she made me love theater. Although I wasn’t friends with everyone in my class, she made it an environment where everyone could enjoy themselves and have a good time together, no matter the circumstances and relationships we had outside the classroom.” When the faculty were asked about her, they were just as ecstatic: “She is a dream to work with as a colleague. She brings the same positive energy from her fellow teachers to the classroom environment.” Another faculty member said, “she encourages the students to find their voice and their passions, and after students take her class, they are more confident in who they are.”
