Farewell Retirees!
Rosalia Desbiens, Italian language teacher, is one of several faculty and staff retiring this year from DHS.
June 1, 2016
This academic year we have a number of staff retiring and moving on to new projects. We would like to thank all who are leaving us this year for their service and wish them all the best with the future plans.
Job title: Principal
Years of service: 42
Most difficult part of your job: The expulsion of a student and/or the dismissal or layoff of a staff member
Favorite DHS memory: Graduations and the Celebrate My Drive Award.
What will you miss most: I will miss the people, staff and students.
What you will miss least: Night meetings.
Retirement plans: Golf, travel, spending time with family; eventually spending winters in Naples, Fla.
Department: Teacher, Social Studies
Years of service: 14
Favorite course to teach: AP Macroeconomics
Favorite DHS memory: Any moments where I read a letter from a student.
What you will miss most: My interactions with students.
What will you miss least: Watching our best teachers leave year after year, long before retirement, because of the management practices within Danbury School District.
What do you hope students will say about you: “He worked hard, would give up his time whenever a student asked and it was obvious that he was passionate about working with students.”
Advice for person who is given your job duties: Work hard and include passion and humor into your classroom.
Retirement plans: Grand Canyon, Outer Banks, three-week trek through Himalayas to Everest Base Camp, Patagonia. Sleep, read, trips on the Harley.
Department: Teacher, CTE-Family and Consumer Science
Years of service: 29; 14 at DHS
Favorite course to teach: Baking and Pastry Arts
Favorite DHS memory: Graduation; seeing my many, many young moms graduate from high school!
What will you miss most: Seeing the joy and confidence my students show as they learn skills in culinary and baking.
What will you miss least: Getting up at 5 a.m. to get to school to get scones in the oven.
What do you hope students will say about you: “She cared about me.”
Advice for person who is given your job duties: Juggle it all: Baking; Food and Nutrition; Infant/Toddler and Parenting! Enjoy this wonderful department!
Retirement plans: For the summer, renting a campervan and traveling up through Utah, the Rocky Mountains on to Glacier National Park ,and finally having the grandchildren join in at Yosemite National Park.
Department: Teacher, Special Education
Years of service: 29 years in Danbury; 4 years in NYC
Favorite DHS memory: Working at RPMS with George Hochsprung, making gingerbread houses in math class. Students had to work together and then deliver their creations to the housing development across the street as an act of charity and goodwill for the holiday season.
What you will miss most: My friends and support of many people at RPMS and DHS.
What you will miss least: Today’s chaos of rigor, evaluations, benchmarks, and not providing for what is best for student success.
What do you hope students will say about you: I hope students remember me as a teacher who was their advocate and who inspired them to achieve to the best of their abilities.
Advice for the person who is given your job duties: For the teacher who replaces me my advice to them would be is to always have patience and to listen objectively.
Retirement plans: Sailing on my boat, caring for two small boys, lots of yoga, bucket list trips in the fall to Savannah and New Orleans.
Department: World Language
Years of service: 43 years
Favorite course to teach: All courses
Favorite DHS memory: Student trips overseas and when I was Awarded 1986 Danbury Teacher of the Year
What will you miss most: My interaction with the students and colleagues
What will you miss least: BENCHMARKS
What do you hope students will say about you: Madame, we will remember you
Advice for person who is given your job duties: Get involved with the DHS community and your classes
Retirement plans: Adjunct professor at a college
Department: Teacher, Foreign Language
Years of service: 43
Favorite course to teach: Italian 1; it began with only 2 classes and now there are 7.
Favorite DHS memory: The classes of 1983 and 1990 because I was class advisor
What you will miss most: The kids, and being able to take them to Italy and teach them about Italian culture.
What you will miss least: Waking up early.
Advice for person who is given your job duties: If you love teaching and you love kids, you’ll be fine; it’s all about enlightenment.
What do you hope students will say about you: That I was involved and hard working, and that I showed commitment and enthusiasm.
Retirement plans: Traveling to see family in Italy.
Job title: Administrative Assistant to the Principal
Years of service: 33; 27 at DHS
Most difficult part of your job: Getting up at 4 a.m.
Favorite DHS memory: All the fun and laughs in the Level 2 office where I worked from 1989 until 1997. Those were the days! We actually got our work done, too!
What will you miss most: Most definitely, the people.
What will you miss least: Getting up at 4 a.m.
Department: Teacher, Special Education; Sign Language; Districtwide teacher, Deaf/Hard of Hearing (DHH)
Years of service: 39; 37 in Danbury.
Favorite course to teach: American Sign Language I
Favorite DHS memory: I have three: when they started offering one ASL 1 class, when they offered two ASL 1 classes, and when my DHH students from the elementary schools came to DHS all grown up!
What will you miss most: The DHH staff, the DHH students, and the ASL students.
What will you miss least: The paperwork.
What do you hope students will say about you: That they enjoyed learning ASL from my class.
Advice for person who is given your job duties: DHS is a large school and there are many people and many different (and time-consuming) tasks to complete but the staff members and all the other schools are incredibly supportive and will help you, but you must ask.
Retirement plans: Focus on my family and my home and also visit my two grandsons. As a Deaf person, I want more people to learn ASL and I want captioning everywhere: in the movie theater, on TV, on the internet … so, I will continue working on those two areas
Department: Crisis Counselor, PPS
Years of service: 22
Favorite DHS memory: Ability of such a diverse student body to coexist in harmony.
What will you miss most: Interaction with students
What will you miss least: Getting up so early
What do you hope students will say about you: “He helped me.”
Advice for person who is given your job duties: Listen to the students
Retirement plans: Writing, work at WCSU
