RMHS business teacher Ms. Lynch will be retiring at the end of this school year after a very successful 22-year career.

Ms. Shelley Lynch currently teaches Marketing, Intro to business, and Financial Literacy.

The Journey to Reading 

For the last 22 years, many RMHS teachers have come and gone, but one familiar face has always been there, Ms. Lynch. Over her 42-year professional career, Ms. Lynch has worked in several different fields including as a training director and working in the public education field. In addition, she has earned a Bachelor’s and a Master’s degree in business.  

Ms. Lynch has always known she wanted to be a teacher, but she had trouble finding a permanent position due to it being a challenging time for school budgets. Ms. Lynch had different teaching jobs outside of Reading, including as a student teacher in Melrose, and also at Chelmsford and Billerica. 

Due to the tight job market in education, Ms. Lynch decided to go into private industry. Ms. Lynch’s work in the private industry.  “I worked for a major health care company. And I started off as a coordinator, a training coordinator.” She also worked in financial services. 

After the birth of her child, Ms. Lynch eventually came to RMHS. 

Being a teacher is one of the most important fields and there are many reasons that people want to get into it. For Ms. Lynch, “It’s the desire to help children learn and enjoy learning.” Ms. Lynch went on further about how she feels about the field of education in general and said, “I feel that education is really important. It opens up doors to opportunities that kids would not typically have if they didn’t educate themselves.” Ms. Lynch said the best part of teaching  “is the relationship building–that I’m joining with students to get to know students on not just an academic level, but to learn about what their interests are and what they would like to do in their future.”

Memories

The familiar face who everyone at RMHS knows was once the new face in the building. Back in 2001, Ms. Lynch started her career at RMHS without a designated room. This did not change until a few years ago. 

“I think the one thing that I can say that’s kind of funny is that these past few years, I finally have my own classroom.  There was a time when I’d have a class in one room and then another,” Ms. Lynch said. 

As Ms. Lynch wraps up her final year at RMHS she looks back at all her memories and one that will always stand out to her was when she went on a field trip with her students to Salem.  “They would learn about a guy that created two businesses.” She continued, “We also in this field trip got to go sailing for an hour and a half. And the kids got to learn how to actually sail and take on different roles. And it was one of the best experiences for the kids and for me, and then they had to come back and they had to create a video pertaining to what they learned.”

While Ms. Lynch has had both positive and challenging experiences in RMHS, she thinks RMHS has changed positively over the past 20 years. She talked about how RMHS has strived to make learning an important part of all students’ lives.

“I think that the school in the years that I’ve been here is doing everything they can and even more to support the learning needs and the social-emotional needs of all students,” she said.

Impact on RMHS Community

Over the years, Ms. Lynch has had a variety of coworkers and students, especially co-workers in the business department. There are currently two other business teachers: Mr. McCarthy and Mr. D’Amore. Mr. McCarthy who started teaching the same year Ms. Lynch, said his first impression of her was she was “incredibly driven”, “professional”, “helpful”, “supportive, and kind” to others and Mr. McCarthy himself. 

Business teacher, Mr. D’Amore, who just started teaching at RMHS two years ago, described his first impressions of her as “smart”, “professional,” and “thorough,” with all the teaching strategies she did. Mr. McCarthy noticed how Ms. Lynch helped Mr. D’Amore get settled in and served as a mentor for him.

Her past students also commented on how Ms. Lynch has impacted their lives. 

James Mahoney, a senior, said, “Ms. Lynch as a teacher was one of the best to ever do it.” Mahoney talked further about how Ms. Lynch was as a person. He said, “Every day she was always so welcoming with her kind heart and gentle tone that I didn’t even mind what we were doing…she was so passionate about her work and made it very interesting.”

Cara Joyce, also a Senior at RMHS who had Ms. Lynch for marketing said, ”So she has a lot of experience, and she knows what she’s talking about. And her lessons go really in-depth about each chapter.”

Ms. Lynch’s class is something she takes seriously. but she knows when to joke around and when to buckle down and get some work done. A healthy mix is something that any student can appreciate in Ms. Lynch’s class. 

“I could always laugh and joke with her while still getting work done,”  Mahoney recalled.

Next Chapter

The decision to retire was not an easy one for Ms. Lynch. 

She said, “I feel like this was a tough, really tough decision for me to make because it wasn’t like, ‘Oh, I’m ready to retire.’ But at some point, you start to get exhausted,” Ms. Lynch said that she felt as though she could have continued to teach for a couple of years but she also said, “ I feel like I also need to take time now for me and explore other interests that I have.”

As she looks into the future, Ms. Lynch has many plans for herself. Currently, she is a member of her hometown’s Historical Society. In addition, one of the things she is looking into is volunteering more. “I wish I had also thought I’d done something with wildlife, and the environment and protection. So that’s something that I’ve always had a strong interest and passion for.” Ms. Lynch said, “That was always something that I wanted to pursue, but never did. So maybe this is the time to do that.”

As Ms. Lynch is ready to move onto a new chapter in her life, the business department and school itself will only have very few “originals” left. With that being said, one thing is for certain, there is no replacing Ms. Lynch.

 One of the things she will miss about teaching is seeing the impact she sees years later. 

“I’ll get emails from kids saying, ‘I’m so glad I took this class in college because it’s so much easier for me,’ or ‘I was able to use what I learned in your class in another class or at work.’ That’s really rewarding.”