What's in a Name?

Meredith Romano

Meredith Romano- French (mother); Italian/German (father); Meredith Romano is a teacher at the local middle school, as well as a graduate of Brown University who teaches honors English to the students. She is a survivor of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, which she was first diagnosed with back in 2009, and currently resides in Valley Stream with her husband and two children. She is a kind and open-minded woman who tends to administer a rigorous curriculum to her students, being relentlessly tough on Mia Vasquez-Rivera as she encourages her to eliminate her fancy terminology and write from the heart. She is also very intuitive, which she attributes to her minor in sociology, and tends to be intrigued by the human condition and the way society works. When she is not teaching, Mrs. Romano is frequently seen spending time with her family or knitting inside her household, having produced a handmade red scarf for her husband. She is also regarded as a good cook and is famed by many of the people in her community for the annual potlucks that she hosts, as well as her potato salad. She admits that she went through something of a goth phase back when she was in high school and would devote much of her free time to writing poetry. She is particularly fond of Emerson's "Self-Reliance,"  a piece which resonates with her after her breakup with an ex-boyfriend. Growing up, Mrs. Romano was a go-getter who was often involved in many extracurricular activities on campus, including being editor-in-chief of the school newspaper and a member of the volleyball team, as well as the vice president for the student council. She often rivaled her classmate Trudy Wells for popularity and status in school and was considered somewhat of a "try-hard", as she was competitive and ambitious, generally with a designated plan to achieve her goals. 

Raised in a conservative family and exposed to a strict Christian upbringing, she is conscientious and prudent and could frustrate people with her compliance and people-pleasing tendencies and inability to loosen up. She enjoyed being the center of attention due to being the often picked on middle child at home and cared about being well-received by her peers. Many of the students appeared to dislike Mrs. Romano's tendency to be a "do-gooder" back then, considering her to be somewhat perfectionistic with her lack of desire to fail or be bested by others. Described as the smartest girl in class, she was intelligent, cerebral, and focused with an intense drive to succeed and follow in her father's legacy of being a lawyer. Studious, serious, and dedicated, she sometimes appears rigid, stubborn, and unyielding, being described as a "killjoy" by a few of her associates. A strong rule abider who is easily stressed, she wishes to project herself as a stable, committed, and practical, often preferring predictability to unexpected surprises. Mrs. Romano is described as the "woman with a plan" and is notoriously organized in her actions, reading works such as The Scarlett Letter and The Biography of Frederick Douglass to her pupils when she can. Despite seeming insufferable and painstakingly obsessive, she has a softer side and is often kind, generous, hard-working, and reliable, often going out of the way to maintain stability and order in her environment. She has a somewhat complicated relationship with her father, whom she desperately tries to please and live up to and feels pressured to succeed and do things the "proper way" to better appease her family. She also has a strong moral compass and prides frankness and honesty, values taught to her by her family's Christian faith, and closeness to her family above all else. 

Mrs. Romano believes there is a right and wrong to everything and can seem somewhat self-righteous in her desires to live up to her standards of morality. She desired to become a part of Trudy's group of friends, but was continuously rejected by her and referred to as a "wannabe". Although she was very involved at her school, she was often lonely deep down even when surrounded by large groups and tended to have more acquaintances than friends. Mia accurately hypothesized that she possibly has never had a true close friend in her life and puts on an act of extroversion to uphold her image around others. Mrs. Romano and Ms. Diaz, who teaches the same subject at a high school level, have something of vitriolic best friendship despite their constant quarreling and are often willing to extend a helping hand to one another if needed. Despite the rigidity in her demeanor, she eventually became less uptight and began dating an Eritrean-American boy on the high school's basketball team during her youth named Amanuel Ahmed. Despite her reputation, she has many other hobbies outside of the classroom, which include puppetry, bird-watching, performing magic tricks, and playing in a rock band. When the roof of her house collapses, she stays with the Cervantes family and is shown to enjoy watching cartoons, much to Maddie's surprise. Mrs. Romano is often friendly, helpful and good-natured, rarely showing any hint of malice and has shown that he truly cares about his students time and time again. Many of them eventually realize she is not as bad as they initially thought after he explains how they can do their homework and have time for things that they like to do. Mia and Hannah Quigley consider her to be their friend at times, with Hannah even greeting her when she sees her in public.

Despite her good spirit, she expresses disappointment when she sees Hannah skipping school and did not object to giving her a week of detention as a result and left her extra assignments. Even though Mrs. Romano is calm and cool, she cackles uncontrollably in the dream sequences that that Mia Vasquez-Rivera has involving her. She frequently struggles with new, modern technology as well, such as using computers, the Internet and her classroom's new interactive smart board. The first time she used the Internet, she fell for multiple scams, which may indicate why she often uses an old film projector during her lessons. She does become a bit more acclimated to some technology in various situations and learns to use an IPad Pro and manages to purchase a canoe online. Mrs. Romano takes her role seriously and often tries to mentor the kids she encounters, occasionally in non-academic fields. For instance, she encourages an overweight boy named AJ Stankovic to be more physically active and is able to relate to Maddie's stuttering problem. It is revealed that as a child she used to be overweight, or a "fatty rat" as she put it when talking, until she began exercising more while learning how to play ping-pong. She is also understanding and empathizes well with Yumi Aikawa, a college-aged girl who formerly attended the middle school and is present for her when she is diagnosed with an early stage of Thyroid cancer in her early 20s. Mrs. Romano mentions that her first husband's name was Chester, which hints at the possibility that he passed away and she later remarried.  She is also incredibly close to her daughter Angela Renaud, giving a heartfelt speech at her wedding and bearing a striking resemblance to her during her youth. Her son Francis also participated as a male cheerleader at school, and she ultimately comes to accept him and his passions for what they are. 

She still keeps her Facebook profile updated, but chooses to add only a select number of people on there, namely her relatives. Mrs. Romano is a pretty woman of mixed French, Italian, and German ancestry with shoulder-length champagne blonde hair and light hazel-green eyes. Her family has lived in the Huntington, Long Island area for many generations, which makes her quite familiar with her environment. She is around average height at 5 ft 4 and seen as attractive  by many of the males in her school with her perfectly sculpted nose and luscious lips. When outdoors for something like using her metal detector, she wears a dark brown hat with a yellow line on the bottom of the tip of the hat going all around the tip. Mrs. Romano was able to cross the street guided by denizens, law enforcement, and Zeppelins and remembers her parents were very polite people. Because she did not find any durable toys, she spent her early childhood without any of her own, although she is eventually is gifted a doll named Clementine and also developed a love for strawberries. During this time, she got to watch Food Dragon and Schiappacasse Shoes, a nearby department store get built, and a place called Tyneville cleared to build Mass Dairy Factory Farms. She became a chaperone for her grandchildren as well as a columnist, managing to have one of her writings published in the New York Times. Mrs. Romano can prepare a good vegetarian risotto and frequently makes stops at Panera bread at noon to buy some soup and salad. She likes to watch CNN to keep up to date with current events and has also shown herself to be fond of game shows such as Wheel of Fortune. She listens to Elton John's music in her free time and sometimes plays the piano, owning one that she keeps in her living room. She is later shown to have retired and to be living in Troy, where she plays bingo with many of the locals at the community center. ISTJ 1w2