At Hazelwood West High School, there exists one teacher with whom one can always find no matter the room or hallway, and someone students can talk to no matter the situation. Dr. Heather Kreinbring “Dr. K.”, as she’s often known, has been teaching for the Special School District at Hazelwood West since 2012, minus a four-to-five year period before the COVID-19 pandemic in which she taught in Germany. Born and raised in the rural Appalachia region of the United States, her unique accent and endless stories of world travel have captivated students for the many years that she’s been present at Hazelwood West.
Growing up, Dr. K would read folktales from countries all around the world, hoping to one day travel to every country that she would read about. “I was a huge reader… I would just read everything I could get my hands on,” Dr. K said. Eventually, her dreams would begin to come true. As a high school cheerleader, she was given the opportunity to travel to London as part of a New Year’s parade. It was from this experience, along with her German language study abroad program in college, during which, she would start her life of travel.
Dr. K’s favorite travel experiences have been in Africa, particularly the nations of Botswana and Zimbabwe. In Zimbabwe, elephants would walk past her while she was on the road, and in Botswana, she would feel – not hear – elephants walking around the campsite she was staying at, along with witnessing lions and hippos prowl around.
Deciding on places to go is a big factor in how Dr. K travels. When she lived in Germany, she would intentionally choose destinations outside of Europe, mainly within Africa and the Middle East. Dr. K wanted to step out of the highly interconnected European continent, where travelling to new countries is like a weekend trip to a new state for an American, and she found the wide open spaces she craved elsewhere by going to entirely new regions of the world. Now that she’s back in the United States, she travels back to Europe every year, along with visiting various other countries along the way. Her next destination is in spring to the Turks and Caicos Islands, a small nation in the Caribbean. After the Turks and Caicos Islands, she would like to see a few other places – Barcelona, Poland, Israel and Kenya to name a few.
Two tips Dr. K gives to first-time travellers are the following: avoid travel agencies (unless the destination is in Africa, in which she suggests using a travel agency in order to support the local economies), and most importantly, take tours. Taking tours allows for you to skip the long, never-ending lines present at many big tourist attractions, and it allows for you to learn the history of a place.
“It’s always amazing to learn things that are reported in newspapers in other countries that are not reported here, and to get people’s perspectives on what’s going on in their country… to see history in other countries, and to see the effects of that history, is pretty amazing,” Dr. K said.
