Westridge Says Goodbye to Ms. Brownridge

Ms. Linda Brownridge, who has taught at Westridge as a Middle and Upper School Art Teacher for twenty-seven years, is leaving the school. She is thinking about pursuing social justice in the criminal system and working with children in foster care. “I definitely want to be involved with making some kind of impact on social conditions,” she said. “I care about people who don’t have a voice, who don’t realize that they’re good people, and they deserve just as much as anyone else. It tears at my heart when I think about people who don’t have the advantages I’ve had and don’t feel good about themselves.”

As Ms. Brownridge prepares to leave Westridge, she reflected on her beginning at this school twenty-seven years ago. Ms. Brownridge didn’t know she would dedicate so much time to teaching when she began as a substitute teacher at Westridge, but she immediately felt connected to the school. “At the end of that,” she said, “I realized I had fallen in love with everything Westridge—the students certainly, most of all, and the beautiful campus, of course, and the people who worked here.”

The people at Westridge were the main reason she stayed. Ms. Brownridge talked about the special moments when students discover something new. “To me, the moments when a student has a revelation—and most often, it’s something that they’ve discovered themselves, not necessarily something I’ve taught them, but something I’ve supported in their learning process that gives them the okay to go ahead—I think those are high moments,” Ms. Brownridge said.

She highly values the relationships she has developed with her colleagues and will miss all the exceptional people she worked with. “I was thinking today how many people I will miss,” she said. “So many people in the faculty and the staff. The students I will certainly miss—but then I always miss them. But seeing my colleagues on a day-to-day basis, I will definitely miss that. And the laughter, definitely the laughter.”