Debra Sorensen:  

I left Kenmore East to become a physical therapist and somewhere in the next 3 years I fell in love with teaching science. I graduated from VCU and continued working at VCU for my Master's in Biology. In the meantime I fell in love and married my first real love. I call him "BEAR" as in grizzly, polar or teddy depending on his mood. Mostly he is a teddy BEAR. we moved to Nj for Bear to find work as a Nuclear Medicine Technologist. I got my first job teaching 6/7/8 grade science - all in the same class, all at the same time, teaching the same concepts at different levels of understqanding. For my first year I was totally overwhelmed and left that job gladly. For fun, my husband and I taught SCUBA diving which I did for a year or two to help recover from my first year of teaching. I taught for 4 years at a private school -during which I had my only child, our son Nicholas. When I was paying the babysitter more than my paycheck I switched to public school. I spent 26 years teaching various sciences and levels (except AP) at one high school. I LOVED my job...until the last two years when we got a new supervisor from another school in the district - because she was making her department miserable. She proceeded to make ME miserable. I asked for a transfer and am now looking to spend the next 5 - 10 years before retirement in my new school. I can honestly say that I still feel the thrill of teaching every morning as I walk into my classroom. The last few years I have been teaching chemistry. What is more exciting than the chemistry behind mentos in a two liter diet soda? I had to give up teaching SCUBA after Nick was born and Bear gave it up a couple of years later. Time with Nick was more important. We still did some diving for fun for several years. As Nick got older I took tae kwon do with him and earned a blue belt. Then my rheumatoid arthritis kicked in big time. I had a total knee replacement July 3, 2006. It brought me mobility and freedom that I had lost for 3 - 4 years. I may have to get the other knee replaced in a couple of years but that is down the road a bit. The last day at my "old" school I was driving home and got rear-ended by someone texting. In addition to ongoing back pain I am still dealing with cognitive problems. I go to cognitive therapy once a week during the school year. The car insurance company won't pay for the therapy over the summer because they feel the cognitive problem,s only impact my teaching. Unfortunately, it took almost 3 additional months of further testing to get approved for additional therapy this year. Because of the difficulty I have in staying focused (I lose my place if I am interrupted during class.), the difficulty I have in grading papers (remembering what I am looking for in an answer as I read a student's response is difficult), the constant pain, and other mobility issues due to advancing rheumatoid arthritis, I am regretably going to retire at the end of this school year. I will have had 30 years in the NJ pension system and a total of 37 years of teaching. I would have liked to have taught a few more years but the stress of keeping up in the classroom is too great. We all have probably had at least one teacher that should have retired before we had them...Expand for more