Excellent Educator: Mounds Park Academy's Maureen Conway

PLYMOUTH, Minn. (WCCO) -- This morning, the WCCO Morning Show is honoring another excellent educator in the metro who has gone above and beyond to make a difference in students' lives.

For some, like our Excellent Educator pick from just last week, teaching is a calling that starts early in life. Others hear the call a little bit later. This week's honoree took some time to explore the world before deciding to mold young minds.

A teacher of history by title, Mounds Park Academy's Maureen Conway considers herself more of a witness to history unfolding.

"It's about seeing the future," she said.

A child of the '60s, Conway is part of a generation that wanted to experience the world before settling down. After college she traveled Europe and places beyond.

"Several of us like to say we were on the frontlines of the women's movement, and we were," she said. "Part of that generation was raised to think that we had a role in the larger world."

When she became one of the founding faculty members at prestigious Mounds Park Academy in St. Paul, she had life lessons to share.

"All the good things that have ever happened have happened because individual people decided that they're not going to tolerate it anymore," Conway said.

Her classes are some of the most popular at the school, and her most popular class covers constitutional law where, each year, students get to present cases to justices from the Minnesota Supreme Court.

She even hosts a lecture series for parents. Beth Averbeck, the parent who nominated Maureen, has a child in her class and is a huge fan of that parent lecture series as well.

Now, after more than 30 years at Mounds Park, Conway is set to retire. Her departure is certainly bittersweet, but she's off to see the world again.

Her consistent lesson for all future students: "Everybody in this room knows they are in a unique position to use their gifts and to do something."

You can nominate a deserving educator by going to the WCCO Morning Show's Facebook page, telling us their name and why they should be WCCO's Excellent Educator of the week.