My Wife is Retiring after 40 Years of Teaching

Congratulations to my wife Bonnie, who is officially retiring from teaching today, June 15th after 40 years of teaching!

Bonnie has only taught at 2 schools in those 40 years! She taught 4 years in Block Island, Rhode Island as the K-8 special education teacher, and for the last 36 years, she has taught at Nokomis Regional High School in Newport.

At Nokomis she has been the Special Education Department Head for the last decade. She was the Auxiliary Marching Director for years, in charge of the flags, rifles and pom poms that walked along and with the Nokomis Marching Band.

As a teacher for 36 years at Nokomis she has taught children of children she once taught!

Living in Bangor, she has driven 30 miles each way to Nokomis for 36 years. Assuming she drove 36 weeks to school, each year, that means she's driven 10,800 miles each year, so over the 36 years she's driven 388,800 miles to and from work! Consider the distance from the Earth to the Moon is 240,000 miles, and that puts it into perspective!

She's adapted, like all the teachers did, when COVID hit. If you think remote learning took a toll on you and your family, remote learning really took a toll on teachers. They went into teaching to be near your children in-person. I have long said that every year of remote learning should have counted for at least 2 years of service time, because of all the extra work and stress that they encountered!

Last September my wife began her retirement job. She's been working at the Ronald McDonald House in Bangor overnights. Essentially she's been working 2 full-time jobs for the last 9.5 months.

Congratulations dear! You have worked so hard. Elmer, Pebbles and I can't wait for you to be home with us. We promise to do our best to keep the house clean all the time and not frantically run around and pick up before you come home!