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<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\nAfter 10 years of passionate teaching at Pueblo High School, Ms. Rhesa Olsen said: \u201cIt\u2019s time to retire.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For the past decade at PHS, Olsen taught various levels of algebra and financial math to more than a thousand Warriors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt\u2019s gone by so fast, and I can\u2019t believe 10 years have come and gone!\u201d Olsen said. \u201cIt\u2019s been a pleasure.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Despite missing all her great students\u2014past and present\u2014she said that she won\u2019t miss the alarm clock going off at 5:30 a.m. Monday through Friday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Olsen\u2019s early life was about living in many wonderful places in the country. Olsen\u2019s father was an officer in the U.S. Air Force, so she and her family moved frequently. Her favorite places to live were Oahu, HI (grades three through five), and Alexandria, VA, where she graduated from high school.<\/p>\n\n\n
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<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\nOlsen then moved to Tallahassee, FL, to begin her teaching career in the late 1970\u2019s at Godby High School. She then taught calculus and algebra at Tallahassee Community College and various algebra classes at Ivy Tech State College in Indianapolis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhen I first started teaching, educators used chalkboards and mimeograph machines,\u201d Olsen said. \u201cI\u2019d go home each evening with different colored chalk on my clothes, hair, and face\u2014as well as purple ink on my hands from the stencils. Promethean Boards have certainly made teaching easier and less messy!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After retirement, Olsen has a lot on her \u201cTo Do\u201d list. She is looking forward to volunteering her time at a few animal shelters as well as tutoring math and reading at a local elementary school.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI\u2019m also excited about visiting friends and family [during retirement],\u201d she said. \u201cI look forward to traveling\u2014especially to places I haven\u2019t yet visited, including Alaska and Costa Rica.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With so much on Olsen\u2019s \u201cplate\u201d after this semester, she said that she will still miss her love of teaching and many of her students.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI think what I\u2019ll miss most are the times when I observed students beginning to enjoy math in my classes,\u201d she said. \u201cI loved seeing students \u2018get it\u2019\u2014and when they realized that math isn\u2019t so scary after all. I will also miss former students coming back to visit to tell me what they\u2019re doing with their lives since high school.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Although 10 years of teaching at Pueblo has been just a fraction of Olsen\u2019s total educational career, she said that she will miss the camaraderie between other teachers both while at Pueblo and after hours.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThere is a lot to say before retirement,\u201d Olsen said, \u201cbut I think what I want to say foremost is that I hope that I have encouraged students to be amazed at the beauty, fun and magic of math. I also want kids to know that one learns from making mistakes, and that they should always try. If they don\u2019t try, they won\u2019t know.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Olsen would like to end her teaching career by quoting poet\/writer George Eliot: \u201cIt\u2019s never too late to be what you might have been.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She hopes students will heed the message in Eliot\u2019s words.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Arnold Ochoa After 10 years of passionate teaching at Pueblo High School, Ms. Rhesa Olsen said: \u201cIt\u2019s time to retire.\u201d For the past decade at PHS, Olsen taught various levels of algebra and financial math to more than a thousand Warriors. \u201cIt\u2019s gone by so fast, and I can\u2019t believe 10 years have come … Continue reading Ms. Rhesa Olsen Retires After Decade At Pueblo<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[247,184,286],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pA2u4-YC","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pueblowarriors.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3758"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pueblowarriors.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pueblowarriors.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pueblowarriors.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pueblowarriors.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3758"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/pueblowarriors.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3758\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3762,"href":"https:\/\/pueblowarriors.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3758\/revisions\/3762"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pueblowarriors.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3758"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pueblowarriors.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3758"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pueblowarriors.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3758"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}