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Covid-19 changes ending to teacher's 31-year story

The desks were still full of books. Art projects were still sitting stacked on a desk. After two months away from the classroom Ellen Gilbert came back one last time

GREENSBORO, N.C. — Ellen Gilbert spent a recent morning pulling down the colored paper from bulletin boards. She went through desks and cleaned them out of old notebooks and pencils. It’s a routine she does every year, but this year was different, “The hardest part I’m dealing with is I feel like I don’t have closure with these students,” said Gilbert.

The Irving Park Elementary school teacher last taught an in-school class on March 13th. The date still is written on the corner of the dry erase board in her classroom. What makes this even more difficult is that after 31 years of teaching Gilbert is retiring, “My mom asked me the other day would you have signed your papers if you knew it would end like this, ‘I don’t know’,” said Gilbert.

So on a day that should have been spent giving goodbye hugs and celebrating her 31 years in the classroom Gilbert spent it alone cleaning out her room one last time, “It’s frustrating not to be able to have that huge celebration after 30 years of educating and let her students come in and former teachers come back and celebrate with her,” said Irving Park Principal Cynthia McKee.

Gilbert talks fondly of her days in the classroom, thinking it would be worth writing a book at some point, “It’s just comedy every day, there’s no dull moment in the classroom,” said Gilbert.

Teachers will tell you not every story has a happy ending, and while this ending may not have been perfect the rest of the story was as good as it gets.

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