Retiring teachers: Kay Wilson valued relationships with kids, music, self-expression
aff Writer
The last choir concert of the year was befitting to Kay Wilson and the message she's fostered over 35 years of teaching. A sense of community, camaraderie and candor immersed the school's auditorium in what was her last concert as a Glencoe-Silver Lake choir instructor.
"I feel totally blessed with working here and having this job," Wilson said with a heavy focus on the positives a long career granted her.
She frequently used "blessed" to describe different memories and experiences throughout her career as she looked back, trying to grasp at a front-runner unsuccessfully. There were too many good memories to garnish a favorite, and she seized on the daily opportunities that made her career one to remember.
"Who else gets to go to school and play piano all day?" she asked.
Wilson noted some moments and relationships that were especially important to her, like having her children in class and the close relationship she shared with her mom, who worked in a similar line of work and was able to substitute teach for Wilson. She also cherishes the relationships she's cultivated with students.
Mixed in with the good memories are also some supremely difficult ones, like losing students to mental hardships. Just the thought welled tears in Wilson's eyes, as she tried to say that no student, or anybody, should have to deal with that kind of internal battle. But after everything she's gone through, good or bad, she's always been able to fall back on her students and music.
"This is my happy place … I really love being here," Wilson said as she extended her arms upward, palms pointing to the walls of her office within the massive choir room. She worked as the school's activities director, among other responsibilities, but nothing brings her as much joy as teaching choir students, she said.
(For the complete story, see the May 29 print edition of The Chronicle.)
