Five retiring LHS teachers talk about their passion – The Laconia Daily Sun

LACONIA The Laconia School District this week says goodbye to five teachers who are retiring. All are ending their careers at Laconia High School, though some have taught other grade levels during their time in the classroom.

This evening the School Board will honor Tim Steuer, Kate McGuire, Linda Danielovich, Nancy Hood, and Karen Anderson.

Their careers have been as diverse as the subjects they have taught.

Tim Steuer is the one who holds the distinction of having taught in the same school he attended.

A member of LHSs Class of 1978, Steuer went off to college where he majored in history. After getting his degree he headed off to Nevada, where he briefly worked in a casino.

When he returned to Laconia he helped coach the LHS football team. He coached sports for 1 years while he went back to college to take courses so he could get his teaching certification.

I always liked history, Steuer said of his decision to teach social studies.

During his career, Steuer has focused as much about physical training as about intellectual exploration. He said he decided to pursue teaching because it was a job with a schedule that easily dovetailed with the schedule for sports practices and games.

He acknowledged that he was treading water during his first two years in the classroom. You need to develop your own way of connecting with kids, he said.

Its a career choice he never regretted and he believes teaching has perfectly suited his temperament and personality.

I could never see myself in a cubicle, he said.

Steuer describes social studies as an overview of economics, geography, psychology, U.S., New Hampshire, and world history, and civics. The goal is to make students aware of the responsibilities of citizenship.

Democracy wont work unless they get involved, he said.

While Steuers time in the classroom spans nearly four decades, Gina McGuires tenure is a fraction of that and yet no part of my professional life has been more rewarding, she said.

A registered nurse, McGuire spent 20 years doing hospital nursing, including time as a cardiac nurse at Lakes Region General Hospital.

Then she shifted to a different field of nursing and became the school nurse at Woodland Heights School. The last chapter in her nursing career started just 10 years ago, when Cathy Weigel called McGuire and encouraged her to take over Weigels job running the nursing assistant program at the Huot Technical Center.

The program gives students in their junior and senior years the chance to get hands-on experience to prepare them to become licensed nursing assistants.

The program gives students the opportunity to try on real-world skills while still in high school, McGuire explained.

She is proud of the fact that every one of her students has passed the LNA exam.

Im going out on a high, she said

Her one regret is that more students have not enrolled in the program. With an aging population, the area is going to need more nursing professionals, she pointed out.

Nancy Hood, who is stepping down after teaching English at LHS for 16 years, got her start in the education field in the mid-1970s as a special education aide at Pleasant Street School. After a time she moved on to take a position as one-on-one tutor for a Down syndrome student who was also hearing impaired. Then she took a position as a paraeducator at Laconia Middle School, and left the public school system to spend 15 years working with special education students in her home.

Hood decided to go back to school in her late 40s and attended the School for Lifelong Learning (now Granite State College) to take the courses she needed to become an English teacher.

After doing her student teaching at Belmont High School, Hood took a part-time position at Laconia High. Her first class was British literature.

Wouldnt you know it. They had me teaching this course. The one class I had (in British literature) was way back in UNH, she recalled.

A significant part of her time has been spent working with students on the margins the ones at risk of dropping or flunking out.

Hood then moved onto the Read 180 program, which used computer-based learning and group learning to improve reading comprehension. When that program was eliminated she was assigned to the Alternative Learning Program, which was designed to help high school students from the Greater Laconia area who did poorly in a traditional structured classroom setting. Then she worked with juniors and seniors who were having trouble getting the credits they needed to graduate.

I love those guys, she said, explaining that experience has taught her that no student fails on purpose. You would be successful if you could, she stressed.

I hope to be the teacher that has helped them to be successful, she said of her career.

In addition to her work in the classroom, Hood also spent a great deal of time with the LHS drama program, including time as the technical director. She also directed a couple of productions, including Hello Dolly.

Ive enjoyed everything Ive done, Hood said of her time as an educator, adding that teaching has also been a time of personal growth. Im more compassionate. My compassion just grew and grew for the students.

Linda Danielovish has been the art teacher at LHS since the mid-1990s. Prior to that she taught art at the middle school for eight years.

Its a great subject to teach, she said.

But Danielovich acknowledged that some students have a hard time getting into the groove because they see themselves as lacking artistic ability.

A lot take (the course) because they need the credit, she explained.

Danielovich said she is most comfortable with fiber art, such as quilting, weaving and knitting. In some of her classes she would show students the art of loom-beading a Native American art form.

Some of Danielovichs students have gone on to careers in art. One is a childrens book illustrator, while another is teaching print-making.

Danielovich regrets the lack of interest in art by many students.

I dont see as much enthusiasm about art, she said. They are too distracted by technology.

But teaching at LHS has been a great experience for Danielovich.

Its a tight town with lots of pride, and theres great diversity, she said.

Karen Anderson has spent the last 15 years trying to get LHS students excited about mathematics.

Anderson, started her education career in Massachusetts as a tutor and special education paraeducator, before moving on to math. After moving to New Hampshire, she taught in Gilford for a time before taking about 20 years off from classroom teaching to help raise three children. When her youngest was about to graduate from high school, she decided to go back to teaching, starting at LHS in the 2005-06 school year.

Since then she has taught pre-algebra, algebra 1 and 2, and a course called senior math, which is designed for college-bound seniors who need to take another crack at math in order to be better prepared for the math courses they will need to take during college.

It was fun to see the light bulbs come on, Anderson said, describing the students success in math that had early escaped them. Its when they realize that I can do math.

Anderson said her aim has always been to make her class a safe space for students who struggle with math or who do not like the subject.

Mathematics doesnt have to be rigid, she said.

Different approaches to solving a problem are all right as long as they are mathematically sound, Anderson explained.

Theres room for creativity in math and for thinking outside the box.

For Anderson, teaching is not just about imparting knowledge about a particular subject, its also about connecting with students.

She believes that students basic expectations are mostly the same as when she started teaching. What has changed is the challenges that many of them face in their daily lives and how those challenges affect their learning.

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Five retiring LHS teachers talk about their passion - The Laconia Daily Sun