By FELICIA FALLANO
After many years of educating and motivating students to achieve their highest goals, Josephine Altovino is now retiring and saying goodbye to Malden High School. In 1978, Altovino’s career began in Brockton High School. Over the years, she has taught at Tufts University, Forestdale Elementary School, and other schools. However, MHS was where she settled for 23 years because of the welcoming community and inspiration by the staff.
Altovino has enjoyed her job as a teacher, watching her students, “flourish into beautiful, intelligent, mature adults, [and] the progress and the maturity that they showed.” She has seen many changes over the years. Reflecting about the past and present, Altovino realized that “the changes are not bad.” She thought “because of technology, the focus has changed and that brings some challenges to the students and their work, [but] that will temper down and at the end; they will find their balance and do well.”
Now that Altovino has moved on from her years of educating, the staff and students of MHS will miss the hard working teacher and wonderful woman that she was. A fellow foreign language teacher at MHS, Mar Marjomaa, views Altovino as a “solid contribution to the foreign language department,” and she will “miss her very much.”
When asked about Altovino, Raisa Herrera, another Spanish teacher at MHS, showed her appreciation for Altovino’s impressively educated students and said, “I wish her the best of luck in her retirement and I will miss joking around with her at lunch and getting her kids the following year because they were always really prepared and knew a lot of Spanish."
Principal Dana Brown referred to Altovino as “a dedicated teacher and also an advisor to our Latino Club. She had a special place in her heart for our newer immigrants and worked hard to ensure they had a good experience here. We wish her good health and good fortune in her retirement years.” Altovino leaves the school with one piece of advice: "nothing is obtained without hard work."
Now Altovino has a Real Estate career, which she has been working in for 25 years.
Thank you Amanda for the sweet article. I appreciate all the comments and although I do miss my students and fellow teachers, I love what I am doing now….and at times I see some of my students ready to be helped in purchasing their American Dream.