Why are you retiring?

“I’m at that point in my career where I feel like I’ve already done what I came here to do. It’s time for new people to come on board. Once I retire, I’m going to work with pre-service teachers, people who are just coming into the profession, and train them. Also, my first grandchild is on the way, so I want to spend a lot of time with them. Besides that, my husband and I want to travel to several national parks.” 

What are you going to miss most about working at LSW?

“It’s absolutely the students. My entire career has been about the students. Every day is different and I love that. All of their different personalities come into a classroom and I love working through that.”

Why did you join LSW?

“Before I joined LSW, I worked as a 9 grade English teacher at Scott Middle School. Once the two new high schools opened up, LPS decided that high schools were now going to be 9-12. So it felt like a natural progression to transfer to Southwest.”

When in your career did you feel the most accomplishment?

“Before I taught at Scott and Southwest, I took a 12 year break from teaching. It was almost like starting all over again. I felt like a brand new teacher and had to re-learn everything. Even so, I had the amazing opportunity to teach at Southwest as soon as they opened. I was able to teach so many different things. Now, I have taught almost everything in the English department. So being a part of it, I feel very accomplished that I was able to teach all these different courses.”

Did you always want to teach English?

“Well actually, I really wanted to be a social studies teacher. In high school I had a fantastic government teacher who really encouraged me and I thought that if I ever became a teacher then that would be the type of teacher I need to be. Social studies was always my kind of thing in high school and English was just an easy course I didn’t really have to work hard in. Then when I went into college, I majored in journalism because I really wanted to write newspapers. Soon afterwards I started feeling confused, so I started to dabble in other things. After everything that had happened I ended up getting my degree in English Language Arts. I’m glad it ended that way too because that degree kind of lets me teach everything that I really love. I can teach speech, theater, journalism, yearbook and so on. In the end, it all kind of came together.”