Before teaching at Elk Grove High School, Laura Bjankini never had guacamole for breakfast.

After arriving to EGHS as a new faculty member in the English department, she now eats guacamole every Friday for breakfast. It’s just something the English Division does at the end of the week. One minute you see the container of guacamole, the next, it’s gone.

And whether if it’s the guacamole in the department office or getting to know her students, Bjankini has fit into her new spot in the English division at EGHS.

She likes playing video games, she goes to the gym, runs in the neighborhood, and takes pottery classes for fun. And on top of all that, she’s starting her first year as a part-time teacher at Elk Grove.

“Some of my former teachers actually taught at Elk Grove,” Bjankini said. “They told me how amazing of a place it was, how supportive of the staff it was to its students and that’s something I wanted to be a part of.”

Bjankini is very familiar with Elk Grove, even though she is from Mount Prospect. She’s a District 214 alum as a graduate of John Hersey High School, and she student taught at Prospect High School with former EGHS teacher Joyce Kim as her cooperating teacher.

Oh, and Bjankini will be working with the sprinters and jumpers of Prospect’s track and field team in the spring.

Bjankini attended the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where several EGHS teachers graduated from.

“She’s a great addition,” English and ELL division head and Bjankini’s supervisor Mecca Sadler said. Sadler said the market to get teachers like Bjankini can be highly competitive, so Bjankini was a welcome addition to the department.

Bjankini, along with that comment, said that she loves the students for their honesty and how real they are.