Chemistry teacher, Ms. Ellen Blanker will be retiring at the end of the 2023-24 school year. Ms. Blanker has been sitting on this decision for quite some time and finally decided that this year would be her last.
Before becoming a teacher, Ms. Blanker was working in an office setting where she did a lot of environmental safety and protection work. Ms. Blanker also had twins during this time, and this is when she decided to stop working for a period of time and stay at home with her children. She has been teaching for 18 years total and ten years at EHHS. Eight years of experience were from before her children were born. She enjoys both working in a school environment and an office environment, but they’re very different to her. She says, “The office, if I didn’t want to deal with people I would just take my phone off the hook. I could hide. But as a teacher, too bad you have a headache because the kids are coming at you and you can’t hide from that.” She also says that waking up early is one of her least favorite parts of being a teacher, but she loves the sense of community it brings her.
At the end of last year, Mrs. Gayle Tracey, another chemistry and physics teacher at EHHS, retired and left those classes behind her. A lot of chemistry classes were taken over by first year teacher, Ms. Diana Kalman, but the physics classes were undecided. Ms. Blanker was asked to get an emergency certification to teach the physics classes this school year. She did this without any complaints and said she enjoyed teaching the new curriculum rather than the chemistry she is used to. EHHS has hired a new teacher for the start of next school year and she is going to be taking over physics and some chemistry classes.
Ms. Blanker has been such a wonderful addition to the EHHS community. The EHHS Science Instructional Leader Mrs. Maria Pompano has been her evaluator since Ms. Blanker began teaching at EHHS. She said, “She’s a team player and we’re really going to miss her. She cracks [students] up. She has a very interesting personality with them.” Ms. Blanker has been nominated to be recognized for her kindness by the kindness club on many occasions.
After her eighteen years of teaching Ms. Blanker’s career will be coming to a close at the end of this 2023-24 school year. Although a very hard decision, there is so much opportunity for her to bike ride and go on vacations. Good luck to Ms. Blanker during her retirement.
