Sitting at a small bistro table in the northeastern tip of Spain, a woman of her early 30s opens up a newspaper to read. Reading the news, she keeps an eye open for anyone searching for an English tutor.

Cathleen O’Donnell has a secret identity it cannot be seen by just looking at her. To find her other identity, one must look inside her soul for what her true purpose in life is: absorbing knowledge so she can help others.

Anywhere that life took her, she took semester courses at nearby colleges. She has gone to University of Missouri, University of Washington-Seattle, University of Nevada-Las Vegas, Mesa College in San Diego, Rockhurst College, Central Missouri State, Augustana, Drake, National Louis, Southeast Missouri State, and the University of South Dakota. Among all of these schools, O’Donnell has accumulated more than 200 college credits  to make up her bachelor’s and master’s degrees.

“You must understand that while doing all this, I was also working full-time and going to school part-time,” said O’Donnell. “I took classes 16 out of the 17 years before I started teaching.”

While going to school, she was not taking classes that were required of her, but classes that she wanted to take.

“When you take the classes that you like, you learn better,” said O’Donnell.

She took classes in yoga, fencing, swimming, the history of the penal system in Europe, and Shakespeare.

Using her retirement from a previous job, she decided to move to Spain to take a break from her career and to figure out what to do with the rest of her life. In order to earn some extra cash, she decided to start teaching English as a second language to people who were just about to go to the United States to do business for their companies. There she taught certain aspects of the different colloquialisms of the United States to help them understand certain phrases they might not have in Spanish.

After coming back from Spain, she went to visit her grandmother in Illinois. She was going to head farther west, but just ended up staying near her family.  While in Barcelona she discovered her passion for teaching. She set to work to make sure she would be able to improve the lives of other individuals.

Now O’Donnell has her master’s degree in the Education of Alternative Youth. There she learned more about the psychology of people. According to O’Donnell, she learned about patience and how to better understand people. She says it is not always about how people appear on the outside, but the real character to a person is what you find on the inside.

Before she came to work at Huntley, she worked as an alternative youth teacher. She taught kids who were in and out of juvenile detention, kids who did not want to come to school, and students who were in dangerous situations.

Her goal was to grab students falling into the cracks of the education system and bring them out to become success stories and that is what she is now doing at Huntley High.

O’Donnell has been working for District 158 for 11 years. Here she has taught Core English I, II, and III, English I, II, III, AP Language Arts and Composition, English IV, English IV Honors, and new this year, Chicago Literature.

Although, not entirely sure when she is going to retire, she does realize it will be sometime in the near future. It may not be decided, she knows she wants to emphasize the two main passions in her life: helping others and learning.

“I feel like I have a thimble full of knowledge, and there is so much out there that I don’t know,” said O’Donnell. “So many things that I haven’t had time to study, but I want to know.”