Garey to Retire from Teaching

Staying in any job for forty years is quite an accomplishment, but teaching for forty years is an achievement few can match. For Sharon Garey, teaching is all about the kids. Her favorite part of being a teacher is watching her students grow and learn. She says, “I loved my kids. They were always “my kids” after I had them in class.” She added that she enjoyed working with her colleagues to try to do what they thought was best for the kids.

Since she was a young girl growing up in southeastern Colorado, Sharon has always wanted to be a teacher. She was the oldest of four girls and two boys, and she remembers playing school with them and she was always the teacher. Her dad, who died in 2014, was a high school teacher, and her grandmother taught in a one-room schoolhouse. Sharon’s mother is still living and resides in Guymon, Oklahoma.

Garey has a Bachelor degree from Panhandle State University in Goodwell, Oklahoma and a Master’s degree from Adams State College in Alamosa, Colorado. She has been teaching for 40 years with 26 of those for USD 214 in Ulysses. When asked why she decided to retire now, she replied, “I decided maybe 40 years was long enough to be teaching!” She plans to relax, have no deadlines, visit family and hopefully do some traveling. There are things she’ll miss -- the hugs from her kids, and their stories and the sweet pictures they made for her.

What are the drawbacks to a teaching career? Sharon says that paperwork was always a drawback. She never cared for grades and would have been perfectly fine without them. She also didn’t like when the state decided to hand down “new” things for them to do.

Does she have any funny or interesting stories from her years of teaching? Sharon shared, “One time when I taught second grade, we had show and tell. One little boy brought the neatest balloon to show. He showed us all the different ways you could blow it up and use it. He said that his parents had a closet full of them in their room. Yes, it was a condom!”

Garey was asked if there was something she wished more people understood about education. She said, “I wish people understood that most teachers give 110 percent to their teaching. They work long hours and spend lots of their own money to do what is best for their classes. Children are coming to us with less knowledge of social skills that used to be taught at home. This puts more on the teacher to be able to teach these things as well as core subjects.”

What can Ulysses citizens do to make sure education in Grant County improves? Sharon says, “Remember that there are good teachers out there. Keep in mind that our students do not all come from affluent families. One on one teaching is the best. If you have spare time, volunteer at your schools.”

Sharon said that some of her fondest memories from her teaching years are of the people she worked with who are no longer here. She also loves remembering the special students that she hopes she made some difference for over the years.

The last thing Garey shared was that, “teaching is a tough, but rewarding career. If more decisions were made with the input of the teachers who know what is going on in the classroom, I believe that they would be more beneficial for our students. Too many times, they (the decisions) are handed down by people who have no idea how a classroom operates or how children actually learn.”