The end of the 2024-25 school year means new beginnings for three McLean County teachers and staff who are calling it a career.
Edd Powers is a music teacher at Tri-Valley Elementary School. Powers has taught elementary school since he started as a teacher's aide after he graduated high school. He is now retiring for the third time, having first retired in 2017 from Maroa-Forsyth less than an hour south of Bloomington-Normal and then again at Tri-Valley in 2021.
"I do want to keep involved with kids. You know, once you have the passion of kids in you, it doesn't ever leave. And I wish that on retirement day you could just flip a switch and I would never think about kids again. But that won't happen," said Powers.
Susy Marcum is the school nurse at Grove Elementary School. Marcum has worked as a school nurse for 30 years, exclusively with Unit 5. She also teaches at Illinois State University's Mennonite College of Nursing and plans to continue to do so in an asynchronous capacity.
"I want to have time to do what I want to do, to tend to our garden and to just read a book for fun. And so I'm very much looking forward to just a slower pace with a lot less stress," added Marcum.
Laura Bach is a science teacher at Bloomington High School. Bach has been teaching for 35 years, spending her first year teaching at both Parkside and Chiddix junior highs. Bach also taught in Freeport and Chatham before spending her final 22 years at Bloomington High School.
"I chose science as the topic that I wanted to teach because I've always been interested in it. Science is really cool, it impacts our daily life," said Bach. "As far as giving the students something that is vitally important to them, helping them better understand themselves, the world around them."
