As some of us know there are teachers leaving the Farm. But why are they leaving? I interviewed English teacher Sabrina  Harrison, one of the teachers leaving Wheat Ridge. Harrison is taking a year of absence by her own choice. When asked why she was leaving, she said she will be “spending more time with my kids and the financial aspect of child care.”  While Harrison is on leave she plans on working for an oil and gas company remotely so that she can volunteer in her kid’s classroom and spend more time with her little one. When asked if she would continue pursuing a job in education, she mentioned that right now the leave was temporary and that she does wish to continue education, “Right now education will be what I’m coming back to.” 

While Mrs.Harrison is gone she plans on working with an oil and gas company, she’s going to be doing inventory seeing who owns the land and where it is. 

Harrison said her favorite grade to teach  is eleventh grade. She said, “ I think it was because it was new I had never taught juniors before.” 

Harrison does not have any hard feelings about leaving she said “No, it just makes me sad–sad, because I’ve been here for 10 years and this school has seen me growing over the years, you know when I came here I didn’t have any kids. So it makes me more sad than anything.”

Because I always want the latest scoop, I asked.Harrison if she had any favorite drama that she’s over heard in her time as a teacher. Unfortunately, she didn’t. Harrison said that mostly all the “tea” that she hears is about students’ relationships and that she normally knows who likes who, when someone’s going to ask out the other person, and when a couple is going to break up.  

Harrison has many favorite memories as a teacher. She said, “My students” and went on to say  “watching them graduate when I know that they’ve struggled, keeping in contact and seeing where life takes them after high school. I have a lot of students that once they graduate they find me on Facebook,and I get to see where their lives have taken them.” 

To end the interview I asked Mrs.Harrison what was an important lesson that she believed everyone should learn and she said, “Not to judge, especially students, on what other people say and the persona that they give off. So there’s a lot of students that may be the hard students, but a lot of times that difficult student became my favorite student.” She went on to say something that I think most parents and teachers can agree with: “Once you’ve broken down this layer you get to see who they really are, they’re wonderful people, and they just have this exterior for a reason. So understanding each kid individually and what impacts them and why they do what they do or come off the way that they do, that’s different for every kid and making that breakthrough is so worth it.” 

We will all miss Harrison on the Farm, and we look forward to her coming back in the fall of 2024!

As we get to the end of the year I think that we all start to jut want to leave and want summer to start, but I think that mindset should shift and when we get to the end of the year we should start to appreciate our teachers more and our school more.