After a fulfilling 33-year career at Sewanhaka High School, Ms.Walsh is ready to bid farewell to her fellow teachers and students. Throughout her tenure, she’s collected a myriad of experiences, ranging from teaching juniors to seniors and eventually, eighth graders. Though Ms. Walsh had taught 11th grade for 28 years, she made the unexpected decision to teach 8th grade in her last few years as a teacher. When reflecting on her time teaching 8th grade, she says “With the eighth grade specifically, there’s joy. There’s joy in learning…education is a process. It’s not like, ‘all right, open your brain and you have to learn this.'”
The joy in learning is an idea Ms. Walsh deeply values and is something she has strived to bring to her classroom. One of her favorite processes when teaching was planning her lessons and figuring out when to tweak her lessons to better suit her classes. She manages to find the excitement in otherwise repetitive lesson plans because of her love for teaching. Her current eighth grade student, Suhana Jubaer, expressed “I’ll never forget her Friday figurative language lessons. She made even the toughest grammar rules actually make sense–and somehow kept it fun.”
Initially, getting into teaching was no walk in the park, but Ms.Walsh never lost her resilience. She admits she didn’t necessarily feel “born to teach” rather, she grew into it. “I grew into it, and I learned a lot about myself by teaching the curriculum and learning from the students”, she explained.
The happy memories she’s made at Sewanhaka could not have been possible without her colleagues either. When reminiscing about long-time colleagues like Mrs. Graziosi and Mrs. Pappaccio, Ms. Walsh expresses “I grew up with them too, so I do consider them my family, you know?” She’s made lifetime connections with her colleagues that she will continue to uphold after retirement. This feeling of respect is mutual. Ms. Crimmins, the chairperson of the English department, noted that Ms. Walsh has been a shoulder to rely on and a pillar for mentorship since the day she arrived. “From when I met her 20 years ago to what I see now, she has always been innovating in the classroom,” Ms. Crimmins remarked, adding that Ms. Walsh served as a trusted mentor and inspiration. “I am actually inspired by the way in which she used this profession. No doubt.”
As she reflects on growing up with the older generation of English teachers, she also describes the feeling of watching the new generation of teachers gain their footing. She believes it is “phenomenal to see them grow, and to see them take the risks, and it’s just really exciting to see.”
Though we will not feel her presence in the bustling Sewanhaka hallways any longer, we can carry her advice with us moving forward. Besides remembering the English grammar lessons she’s drilled into our heads, Ms.Walsh hopes her students remember that “we’re not defined by a moment, we shouldn’t be judged by our mistakes, that we can be better than our mistakes. And so if we do something that we’re not proud of or not happy with, it doesn’t define who we are”.
Looking towards the future, Ms. Walsh is most excited to pursue her hobby in beekeeping. Driven by her lifelong love for learning, she has spent the last few years taking beekeeping classes so she could focus on it during retirement. While she may be leaving the classroom, Ms. Walsh is proof that the best teachers never truly stop being students.
