BLOOMFIELD, NJ — Carteret Elementary School teachers and staff were in black last week. The attire included black T-shirts proclaiming in white lettering, “The Legend Has Retired.” But on the contrary, the occasion was not a somber one, at least not yet. The legend in question is sixth-grade mathematics teacher Wendy Walker, who is retiring after 44 years as a district instructor and until next week, still walking the hallways.
Walker received her teaching certificate from Upper Iowa University and her master’s from Marygrove, in Michigan. She attended Clifford J. Scott High School, in East Orange, and both her grandfather and father were doctors for the high school football team.
“I always grew up with a desire to help other,” she said last week at the school. “I thought about nursing. Then I changed and thought I’d enjoy teaching which I thoroughly do.”
Walker taught her first 2 1/2 years at Watsessing Elementary and the remainder of her career at Carteret. She has had every elementary school grade but kindergarten and the fifth-grade. As can be expected from a retiring educator, some of Walker’s own teachers made an impact on her. She especially remembers her kindergarten and fourth-grade teachers, and her high school biology teacher.
“But my godparents were educators,” she said. “My godmother was a home economics teacher and my mother’s best friend. My godfather was an industrial arts teacher and did a lot of projects with my father in New Hampshire.”
She said she is leaving now while she feels she is doing her best teaching.
“Every day I’m happy to go to work,” she said. “My last year wasn’t a struggle to come.”
But she admitted that her retirement is just beginning to sink it.
And she tried counting the principals for whom she worked and came up with a number of about nine.
Walker is a Bloomfield resident with a home in Vermont. She plans to devote herself to projects around her Vermont home and playing golf which she has been doing for five years. The sport, she said, has taught her not to be too hard on oneself. She admits that it is sometimes better to simply toss a ball from the rough instead of using a club.
“Once you have that nice shot, you come back to golf,” she said.
Walker’s entire family was athletic and she has been water and snow skiing since the fifth grade.
She also helped to transport the 2002 Winter Olympic Games flame from Greece to Salt Lake City where the events were staged. Walker carried the flame a short distance through New Hampshire. For the Olympics, the journey is accomplished by having the flame originating in Greece ignite a succession of torches. It is the flame that is being transported and not a torch. In 2002, Walker said 11,500 runners carried the flame.
This past February, during a Carteret School celebration of the opening of the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics, she carried her torch into the school gym amid cheering students. She wore her official 2002 Winter Olympic outfit while doing this.
As for future employment, her brother stages events for teachers and she may work for him.
She also remembered her first day as a teacher.
“I do remember at least one student in that classroom,” she said. “He was a challenge, but a good kid. He was struggling academically and he’d misbehave.”
She was patient with this boy and showed interest in him and said she would tell an aspiring teacher to be patient with their students, and calm and confident. She would also advise them that they need the desire to put in the time to develop lessons.
She will miss and remember Carteret for its collaborative efforts by teachers and staff and the special events, such as the 90th and 100th anniversaries. Others will have to continue programs that benefited from her effort — acts of kindness celebrating Martin Luther King Jr. Day and the Veterans Day program.
“I am just grateful for having the opportunity to teach,” she said.
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