From Handball Champion in Kosovo to Our Beloved PE Teacher: Meet Mimoza

If you have ever stood near our gym during PE, you have probably heard Mimoza before you saw her: the laughter, the cheering, the energy of a class that has been waiting all day to move. Her students will tell you, without hesitation, that PE is the best part of their day. But behind the whistle and Mimoza’s warm smile is a story that spans two continents, two languages, and a lifetime in sport.

Mimoza was born and raised in Gjilan, Kosovo, a small country in the Balkans in Southeastern Europe. She grew up in an Albanian family and community, and Albanian remains her first language. It is a language she is deeply proud of: it forms its own branch of the Indo-European family, unrelated to its Slavic neighbors, and has survived as a distinct language for thousands of years. Its alphabet, she will happily tell you, is the largest in the Balkans, at 36 letters.

If you wanted to understand where she comes from, she would not point you to a landmark. Instead, she would invite you to her family's table. In Kosovo, hospitality is everything. When a guest arrives, you cook, you serve, and you do not let them lift a finger. Coffee is never just a quick drink; it is a reason to sit down, talk, and spend real time together. "It feels strange," she says, "to imagine a Balkan home without coffee to offer a guest."

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Sports have been the “red thread” running through Mimoza's whole life. She began playing handball as a girl and went on to play professionally for about twenty years. She was named the best player in Kosovo four times, and she won medals as both a league champion and a cup winner. She competed in tournaments across Europe and the Balkans. Amazing!

It was her handball coach, whom she played for from age 10, who first showed her she could teach. When she was 17, he started a program for younger children and asked her to help. Learning from him how to be patient and teach step by step, she realized she had something to offer the next generation. "It was during that time," she says, "that I started to realize I could be a good teacher."

She studied Physical Education, earned a master's degree in Sport Science, taught middle school, and then spent about ten years teaching handball at the University of Prishtina. Today, in Oregon, she still plays on a co-ed team in Portland, and for tournaments she travels to play with a team from San Francisco.

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Mimoza met her husband in Kosovo, where he was working at a military base in Kosovo for the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD). They fell in love and married there. When his contract ended, they had to decide where to go. He is from Wyoming, but Mimoza, a city girl through and through, knew small-town Wyoming wasn't quite her style! A good friend of his lived in Oregon, in a bigger city, and that settled it. They headed to Portland.

She was 35 when she moved to the United States, leaving behind her career, her family, and her friends. "I like to take risks and explore," she says. "I could give the U.S. a try."

It was not easy. She knew some English, but living life in English is a different thing entirely. In those early months, living with her husband's family, she sometimes felt as if her brain actually hurt from concentrating on every word. Her father-in-law was an English teacher and has a degree in English education, and he helped her take it step by step. Everything, from how things worked to where to go, had to be learned from scratch.

That first winter brought one of her most memorable adventures. Her husband took her for a drive into the Wyoming mountains, where their car got stuck in the snow. As it grew dark, Mimoza's imagination went into overdrive. Were there bears? Bobcats? "You brought me here to die!" she remembers thinking. She had left her career and her country, and now this? In the end, she asked for the keys, slid into the driver's seat, and drove the car out of the ditch herself. "Now it's funny," she says. "It wasn't then!"

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In the gym, Mimoza sees something special. Classroom teachers sometimes tell her a student is having a really bad day. Then that child walks into PE, starts to play and laugh, and for 45 minutes forgets everything else. Those moments, she says, taught her that her job is about much more than skills and games. It is about making children feel comfortable and giving them a place to be themselves.

Asked what she would teach her students if the curriculum did not matter, her answer was simple: to enjoy being children. "There will be plenty of time to be adults," she says. "Childhood goes by very quickly."

Today, Mimoza considers both Kosovo and the United States to be home: Kosovo because it is where she was born and where her family, language, and memories live, and the U.S. because it is where she has built her career and created a family. If she could send a message to herself on the day she arrived, it would be this: Be patient and trust yourself. One day, this unfamiliar place will become another home. And don't forget where you came from while building where you are going.

The next time you see Mimoza, ask her the question she says people rarely ask: "Who were you before you became a teacher here?" You will be glad you did.