This year at Brentwood High/Middle School, we have a new FACS (Family and Consumer Sciences) teacher, Beckie Guillot-Beinke. Ms. Guillot-Beinke is a Saint Louis native who attended Mizzou. She got a degree in journalism, masters in education, and decided to start teaching. Ms. Guillot-Beinke has been a FACS teacher for the past two years and has taught at Parkway Central, Kirkwood, and Lindbergh. She was a photographer for 20 years, and if she weren’t a teacher, she would be a photographer. When we asked Ms. Guillot-Beinke what made her want to work at Brentwood, she said, “The opportunity to teach both high school and middle school was exciting, the opportunity to teach so many classes, and the good district and community.”

If any students ever want to take her class, she would say that her teaching style is kinesthetic (hands-on), relevant, real-life based, and has real-world applications. According to Guillot-Beinke, the hardest part of being a FACS teacher is keeping students safe since there are so many hands working and anybody can make a mistake: “there’s a wide range of curriculum which can be challenging,” she says. Guillot-Beinke is quite excited about current construction going on during her first year at Brentwood. She says that it’s exciting, and progress is always challenging, but it’s not a bad thing. Ms. Guillot-Beinke wants to start a food column in our online paper with recipes and food topics where students can share ideas about convenient, healthy eating. A few fun facts about our new FACS teacher are that instead of choosing between pie or cake, she would choose both. Her favorite foods are pizza, omelets, her dad’s steaks, and her mom’s chicken salad. So far, she’s enjoying being an eagle because it’s lovely and new, so let’s try and make Ms. Guillot-Beinke feel welcomed!