Business teacher Jamie Kuethen (pronounced key-thin) is quickly becoming a favorite in her first year at LHS.
Kuethen is 26 years old and was born in Suffolk County. She lived in Saint James when she was young. For her first 10 years of school, she attended Mills Pond Elementary and Nesaquake Middle School. After graduating high school, she attended West Virginia University. After graduation from college, she moved to New Jersey and started a career at The Hershey Company. At the age of 24, Kuethen returned to Saint James where she now lives with her older sister, Kimberly, who is 29. Kuethen currently attends Hofstra University part time and is earning her master’s degree in business education. On making the career change to education, Kuethen said, “It was a big decision to switch my entire career path, but it was the right choice for my future and goals. It’s never too late to go back to school and try something new.” She took business classes in high school, including college accounting and Virtual Enterprise (VE). While at West Virginia, Kuethen earned a bachelor’s degree in marketing.
Kuethen has worked at Aerie, American Eagle, Coach Outlet, Hershey, and also as a pastry chef. Two weeks after graduating from West Virginia, Kuethen started her job with The Hershey Company. Kuethen discussed her responsibilities there: “I managed a $7.5M territory covering 30 mass merchandisers across New Jersey and Staten Island.” Kuethen said her favorite part of this job was getting to train new hires. She added, “I identified a gap in the onboarding process and created several resources and guides to help new hires transition into the role.” Since then, she realized her passion was to teach, so she went back to school to get her master’s degree.
Kuethen’s favorite insects and animals are bumblebees, ducks, dogs, and geese. She has a goose statue, called Gus, that she loves. This statue was given to her for her birthday by the VE class and business teacher Dr. Benedict Tieniber. Kuethen has a “very sweet” pet chihuahua named Forest Lily that is seven years old and four pounds. Kuethen said that Forest Lily is her “favorite thing in the whole wide world.” Kuethen’s friend gave Forest Lily to her as a gift since they are a “firm believer that everyone should have a dog.” Some other fun facts about Kuethen are that her favorite holiday is Halloween because she likes dressing up in funny clothes, and her favorite season is fall. She also likes black iced coffee from Dunkin’ Donuts. In addition, Kuethen has a collection of around 200 rubber ducks. She loves arts and crafts like painting, drawing, sewing, knitting, and crocheting. She enjoys playing arcade games at places such as Dave & Buster’s. Her favorite arcade game is Mario Kart, and she attests that she is “really good at it.”
Kuethen is an advisor of two clubs at LHS. She said she loves being the advisor of the Girls and Strength Club, and she enjoys being a co-advisor with Tieniber of the Distributive Education Clubs of America (DECA) club. DECA is a business club in which students compete in four different career pathways: marketing, finance, business management, and hospitality and tourism. Kuethen said, “I remember when I competed with DECA in high school, and I learned a lot about professional development from my experience at the different competitions.” She is very excited for the upcoming competitions that LHS students have been preparing for. Kuethen expressed, “In the first week of March, 11 LHS students will be competing at the state conference in Rochester. They have been preparing for the last few months and are ready to put their skills to the test.”
Kuethen is extremely outgoing, kind, happy to help, and energetic. Tieniber said, “There are not enough words to describe how cool Ms. K is.” He added, “Ms. K is doing a great job in the classroom teaching, and she continues to make connections with the students.” Junior Olivia Pomponio said, “I think she’s super fun.” Junior Regan Casey said, “She brings a liveliness to the classroom and excitement for students to learn.”
