HOUSTON, Texas – Jennifer Stephan – at 26 – is still a very young lady.

Yet she has come a long way since her days of growing up as a youth in Speers.

Stephan, a 2000 Charleroi Area High School graduate, has traveled abroad to study. She joined a national teaching organization and landed a job in Texas. And, most recently, she became engaged.

Yes, she has grown quite a bit since she left the home of her parents, Thomas and Sylvia Stephan, four years ago.

Today she is employed by a growing new school district, International High School at Sharpstown, which is located in a suburb of Houston.

“The school is only two years old and we have 200 students in grades nine and 10,” said Stephan. “Next year, we will have grades 9-11 and the year after we will have grades 9-12. It’s an exciting job.”

At International, she serves a dual role as English teacher for the freshmen and instruction coordinator for the high school.

While the name of the school would suggest that the student body is composed mostly of foreign students, Stephan says that is not the case.

“About 80 percent of our students are from the U.S.,” she said.

“But there is a lot of diversity in Houston. There is probably more diversity here than you would think. I have met people from all over the world here.”

After graduating from Charleroi, Stephan went to the University of Pittsburgh where she earned a bachelor of arts degree in politics, philosophy, economics and English writing.

She joined Teach for America in 2005. Teach for America is a non-profit national organization that places recent college graduates in Title I low-income schools around the country.

“They placed me with Sam Houston High School, here in Texas,” she said. “It’s a much bigger school with over 2,700 students.”

After three years at Sam Houston, she went to International.

Stephan says while she misses the Pittsburgh area, she loves living in Houston.

“It’s really wonderful here. I like it a lot,” she said. “I like the Mexican food, the rodeos É there is so much to do. And, again, I like the diversity of the people here.”

And what she also likes is that she can still loyally follow the Pittsburgh Steelers in Texas.

“There are a lot of Steelers fans here,” she said, laughing. “A bunch of us get together every Sunday and watch the Steelers at a Steelers bar here.”

She says she comes home two or three times a year to visit her family and friends.

“I still miss home,” she said. “I always come back at least for the holidays.”

She and her fiancŽ, Andrew Kapral, will be getting married in April in Houston.

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