After three years of teaching at Westhampton Beach High School, English teacher Mrs. Connelly will be leaving us.

One of the best English teachers in WHBHS, Connelly cheers up a room by walking into it and cares for each of her students as one of her own.

Mrs. Connelly makes a lot of happy memories for her students and she’s always loving and caring. She loves teaching her students. She said, “I am lucky – my students don’t hesitate to buckle up and go on a journey with me.”

In 2019, Mrs. Connelly was hired at WHBHS.  She taught English 9, English 11, and advised the Seascapes literary magazine club.  Before WHBHS, Mrs. Connelly worked Hauppauge and taught there for over a decade. After leaving Hauppauge, she worked from home in EdTech and taught remotely, raising her five children.

The transition going back to work was easy for Mrs. Connelly because of her students.  She said, “When you find people you love working with, you never work a day in your life. I work with the best people around – they just happen to be high school students. But those students have made the difficult transition from work-at-home mom to full-time teaching mom, wonderful and worth what I gave up to be here.” Not only did Mrs. Connelly teach us, but her students also taught her in ways she didn’t think would be possible.

Mrs. Connelly will be deeply missed by her students and myself personally. Not only has she taught me to stay strong in the hard times but she also has taught me that you can’t give up because you have no hope.  You have to push through to the deepest things and if you fall get back up until you succeed.

As for what’s next for Mrs. Connelly, she said, “I don’t know what life has in store for me next. I don’t think I will be teaching in a classroom again. I am just going to trust that there is something I am meant to do and have faith that I will find the path I am meant to take.”