The departing faculty of 2025, Andy Riffel and Beth Gilmartin
By Hadley Cress ‘27
Photos Courtesy of Beth Gilmartin (left) and Andy Riffel (right). Collage assembled by Hadley Cress.
A key part of Catlin Gabel School (CGS) will always be its community. The connections built at this school are important and long-lasting. However, not everything is forever. As the school year comes to an end, we must say goodbye to Andy Riffel and Beth Gilmartin. Their time here will be missed but not forgotten. To celebrate their contributions to our community, I interviewed both teachers about their experiences here at CGS and their plans for the future.
How long have you been at CGS?
Beth Gilmartin
“This is my third year.”
Andy Riffel
“It's my fifth year. I started with the pandemic, it was actually fantastic. One reason is I was at a public school where kids were not showing up for class because I was at another school before this, and it was really tricky teaching during the pandemic.”
Why did you come to CGS?
Beth Gilmartin
“I'm really interested in program education and experiential education. So, Catlin is really special, it has a lot of things that I was looking to pursue in my career. I really enjoyed being part of outdoor trips while I've been a Catlin, and also part of global trips, and then also experiential education in the classroom around inquiry-based learning in mathematics, and having kids really learn math through doing math.”
Andy Riffel
“I had actually been kind of pining after school for a while. I learned about it through a professor of mine, when I was in a PhD program at Portland State University, and I went to visit the school to learn about its educational style in the lower school, this sort of like discovery-based learning and making sense of numbers through relationships. It matched what I was thinking, was valued in mathematical education and research … and it was like, whoa, there's actually schools that do these things, and Catlin Gabel’s one of them.”
How has your experience been at CGS?
Beth Gilmartin
“I really enjoyed being at Catlin, and I've learned a lot and I've grown a lot as a person. There are really amazing students who are really dedicated to their education and are always ready to learn, I really appreciate that.”
Andy Riffel
“Everything was online at first, but then I'd show up at campus and all kinds of people would know who I was or want to get to know me and establish a relationship. You actually get to know the first names of people in IT or people in other divisions. You get to do a lot of interacting with other people, and there's a lot of consistency of seeing the same people; it’s not such a big school that you're just one in the crowd, you actually get to know people.”
What is your favorite CGS memory
Beth Gilmartin
“Going on the Finland trip last year was really an amazing opportunity to really dive into experiential education and seeing students really learn about [the] history, a place, about the Cold War, about what means to be a baltic the state while being in the country, and it was amazing to see that learning and to have that learning alongside, and to see people like Patrick and Bob who have such expertise.”
Andy Riffel
“This is going to be an unpopular opinion, but I love meetings. The faculty meetings and how we have cross-divisional opportunities to get to know a lot of people, that is one of my favorite things. I've enjoyed having the same students in a small class throughout the year and just feeling like we're like a family by the end of the school year, and the way that you really get to know students.”
How has CGS changed your life?
Beth Gilmartin
“I've learned a lot more about managing adults and managing teams, working at Catlin than I did before, because I'm the math department chair, so a part of my job was thinking about what the math department needs and how are we gonna get there? Before I came to Calin, I thought a lot about my classroom, and I thought a lot about, like, what was happening in my classroom and what my classroom was doing, and now I think a lot more about the school and like, where's the department going? Where is the school going? How are we making systemic changes broader?”
Andy Riffel
“At Catlin Gabel, there's just like this warm spirit, and I think … it's gonna be kind of that gold standard of beautiful community that I might never find at another place. It is a place I'd love to return to.”
Why are you leaving CGS? And where are you going?
Beth Gilmartin
“I started a really cool opportunity to continue working on things that I care about. There's a school called Menlo in the Bay Area that's starting a semester program within their school … It's all about experiential education. It’s an opportunity to really shape that program and to really look into what experiential education could be if the whole program was centered around it and not confined by schedule.”
Andy Riffel
“I started Catlin Gable teaching full time in 2020, and then, in 2022, I had a baby girl named Hazel, and [when] she came, it was really challenging to finish out that school full time. [Then] I switched to half time in the fall of 2022, it was great, I got to balance being at work and being a dad and now we have a new baby and she has taken away that other half time, so I'm going to zero.“
“I'm going to continue with tutoring math in the afternoons or weekends, and I'm applying to an adjunct position, teaching like one class out of a College or University and math tutoring.”
Overall, the impact these two teachers have made here at CGS has changed us all for the better. They will both be deeply missed, in the math department especially.