Mrs. Snyder
Karen Snyder
It isn’t unexpected for a teacher who teaches a language to be cultured and adventurous, and Spanish teacher Karen Snyder is a perfect example of this.
Snyder got her Bachelor’s degree at Bloomsburg and Master’s degrees from both Penn State University and Millersville University. Her Penn State degree is in education and her Millersville degree is in elementary education.
Snyder is retiring this year after 35 years of teaching; she didn’t start at our school though. Snyder started her teaching career at West York, both middle and high school.
Switching back and forth between the two became too hectic for her, so she ended her time at West York in 1991.
She has been the Spanish teacher here since then. Spanish wasn’t offered here before she introduced it, they previously only offered French, German, and Russian.
One of the earliest classes that she taught here was “Test Supplemental Reading”, a class where students must choose novels to summarize in correct grammar with an intention to better their reading comprehension. This class was replaced with two new English electives.
Snyder always wanted to become a teacher, but she had another aspiration as well. During the summer breaks that teaching provides, she was planning on being a cruise director.
She pursued this for a period of time; however, they needed cruise directors for the winter months, and school occupied her winter months.
But she is an avid traveler and she plans to do more traveling during her retirement. Her goal is to make it to the other 12 states that she hasn’t already visited.
She’s been to 44 countries in her lifetime, and of these her three favorites were: New Zealand, Switzerland, and Costa Rica. “These countries were my favorites because they had very friendly people, great climate, and lots of enjoyable activities.”
Another plan for retirement for her includes spending more time with friends and family.
Teaching is a time consuming profession and often can take away from this.
“When I’m completing required paperwork and grading papers, that all dips into my family time,” she said.
While Snyder will not miss the paperwork, there are other areas that she will find herself missing.
“I’ll miss sharing my passion of traveling with the students and helping them achieve their goals. I’ll also miss spending time with my colleagues.”
With her time doing these things coming to an end, students will soon reminisce on the impact that Snyder had on them. Following retirement, like every teacher, Snyder hopes to be remembered as “an energetic caring teacher who was able to share her passion of traveling.”