By Benjamin Hong, Features Editor
This year, River Hill welcomes Linda Mattes, a graduate of UMBC and Towson, as one of the new additions to the administrative team. Taking over for Ms. Lancashire as the school’s nurse, she assumes the responsibility of caring for the wellbeing of the student body. While this is a hefty task, Ms. Mattes strives to bear it well with the thousands of man-hours in the medical world she has behind her.
Prior to coming to River Hill, Ms. Mattes worked as an Emergency Room nurse in critical care units for over twenty years. After these decades of grueling shifts and life-or-death decisions made in mere minutes, she decided to see if school nursing would be a career that suited her. She began “as a sub two years ago for the school system, just to see if this is something that I really wanted to do. It is a drastic change.”
Through her subbing, Ms. Mattes discovered a love for school environments, expressing that her lifelong passion for helping children led to her ultimately finalizing the decision to change her career path. However, this shift in lifestyle was not purely driven by her passions, also being a rather informed decision. Ms. Mattes plans to draw on her ER experience to help her in her new work, explaining that “When I worked in the ER I had a lot of autonomy. I could make decisions quickly, on the spot, and on my own. Here, I end up doing the same thing, because I don’t have a doctor next to me telling me what to do, so I have to make those decisions on my feet and in real time with a student.” This prior experience is something that Ms. Mattes is “very grateful for,” and she believes that without it, she “wouldn’t be as sure of how I’m going to direct my care towards the kids at our school.”
Ms. Mattes also realizes her dream of helping children outside her professional life, coaching field hockey, lacrosse, soccer, and basketball. She has worked for Girls on the Run programs, a nonprofit that strives to empower girls by “building confidence, kindness and decision-making skills,” and mentors for Girls on Fire, another nonprofit organization that strives to prepare girls to become leaders. She has also shored up her abilities as a pediatric nurse in summer programs such as Camp Airy & Louise and Echo Hill Camp.
This immense passion for helping kids grow and develop will be critical in Ms. Mattes’ future success in her new job as a school nurse, and her decades of experience in the ER will no doubt back up that passion with practical skill and medical know-how. However, when asked to provide a statement to the River Hill community (students and parents alike) before beginning her work, Ms. Mattes had a relatively simple message to deliver, promising that “I will always be prudent in my advice to you, because at the end of the day, this is someone’s child that I am entrusted to take care of, and I don’t want to lose that trust.”