Pamela Brody has been teaching since 1973 and has been teaching in the Special Education Department (SPED) at Malden High School for 12 years. At the end of the 2014-15 school year, she will be retiring and ending her long teaching career. Despite her leaving MHS, she will not be forgetting the many relationships she has made, teachers and students alike. For her last few years of her career at Malden High, she’s been working in the same building as her daughter, Jen Brody.
Jen Brody has started teaching in the SPED Department of MHS and the Pace program in 2012 and for those three years, her mother has been there to help get her into the swing of things and find her way around the school. She describes her mother as “one of the most giving people that [she] knows.” Jen Brody supported and encouraged her daughter when she chose teaching as something she knew she wanted to do for a living. Pamela Brody has been teaching for as long as Jen Brody has been alive so when she sees her mother teaching, it’s a normal thing for her.
Although Pamela Brody and her daughter work with different people at MHS, she believes the last few years of her time at MHS with her daughter teaching and helping students grow near her have been the most special to her. She has always been very caring to her daughter’s students and they enjoy visiting her in their free time. Even though she sees her daughter outside of school often, she will miss being able to speak to her daughter on a professional level and to have her be one of her colleagues in the building.
Pamela Brody will miss the students that she has worked with most when she retires, especially “working with them, seeing their progress, what they need, watching them grow from freshman until they graduate, and the growth they have made, socially and academically.” During her time here, she has made many friends, such as her colleagues in the SPED department and all of the teachers in MHS. She considers every single staff member to be very caring. Out of all the schools she’s taught in, she considers Malden to have the most caring and supportive staff.
She hasn’t gone far as to planning out what she will do when she retires from Malden High but she considers tutoring and most of all, spending time on herself, well-deserved after helping all of her students get an education and positively affecting their futures.
Pamela Brody considers teaching as a big part of her life that she will miss when she retires. “It’s heartwarming when I see the students come back and so many come back to see me. I find it very touching and heartwarming that they still remember me,” she stated. However, she will find consolation in the fact that Malden High will be left with at least one Brody teaching and aiding the growth and development of adolescents.
