Betsy Stix
English, Creative Writing and Yoga Teacher
Tel: (805) 646 4343 Ext
English, Athletics
English III Honors, English III-IV Sustainable Happiness, Creative Writing, Yoga
Year Appointed: 2011
B.A. Williams College - English (Junior year spent at La Sorbonne, Paris)
M.A. Stanford School of Education - Curriculum Development and Teacher Education
Betsy grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio, and attended Cincinnati Country Day School for 13 years. She played soccer, ran track, did gymnastics, and worked at a riding stable teaching riding and training horses. She attended Williams College in Massachusetts, where she played soccer and spent her junior year in Paris at the Sorbonne studying French literature and art. She has been teaching English, French, and Yoga for the last 20 years at private schools in Tokyo, Manhattan, Palm Springs, Santa Fe, Ojai (Ojai Valley School), and, most recently, Napa. Over the years she has also worked in public relations for Ralph Lauren, opened a cafe to benefit a no-kill animal sanctuary in Utah, and published a children's yoga teacher training manual. Betsy has been practicing, studying, and teaching yoga to people of all ages for the last 25 years and currently teaches at studios and privately as well as leading kids' yoga teacher trainings. She is a Thai Yoga Massage Therapist, a fair weather runner, and a vegan. She loves to read and discuss what people are reading.
She was attracted to Besant Hill's history, philosophy, diversity, and commitment to community as well as the individual. The staff is so clearly dedicated to bringing out the best in each student and helping him or her blossom. She was looking for a school where she would be encouraged to follow her own interests in an effort to cultivate the passions of students. Teaching Brave New World and Island at a school co-founded by Aldous Huxley is an English teacher's dream! In addition, Betsy was attracted by the land, the trees, and the birds.
As a teacher, she would like to support Annie Besant's vision and the founders' mission. Aldous Huxley described developing in students "a steady will to go on learning, an effort to remain open and elastic," and a wish "to go on educating themselves"(Commencement Address, 1951). Betsy hopes to help the English Department create readers, writers, and critical thinkers and to work at integrating the school curriculum, forming and deepening relationships among disciplines. She wants to share her love of reading, writing, ideas, and the earth while promoting yoga and mindfulness as tools to develop and foster health, self-understanding, connection to others and the planet, and peace. As Annie Besant noted, education embraces "the health, growth, and evolution of the physical body, the emotions and the mind, and the unfolding of the Spirit as Will, Wisdom, an Creative Activity" (1927).
Betsy is married to math teacher Brian McColgan, and they have two sons, Sammy (14), and Will (11). They like to travel, hike, camp, cook, watch movies, spend time with their dog, three cats, and two guinea pigs, and argue about what radio station to listen to in the car. They also love to discuss art, history, literature, music, philosophy, psychology, human development, and current events at the dinner table. At least, that's the idea. After two years teaching in Northern California, they are so grateful to return to the Ojai Valley and once again call it home.