A brand new self-designed home stood before Mrs. Patty Watters and her husband. Her knowledge of architecture and engineering helped her to build and design her own custom home. To most people, it would appear that Mrs. Watters had fulfilled all of her goals and had found the career that she loved. However, Mrs. Watters had another career path in mind for herself: a teacher.
In college, Mrs. Watters decided that her real passion in life was mathematics, so she decided to make a 360 degree transition from a career in architecture to a career in mathematics. Mrs. Watters faced this transition of taking a new career path to teach her favorite subject, and next on her list of changes was coming to a new school system and teaching mathematics at Walpole High School.
Mrs. Watters previously taught in Milford, but made the switch to Walpole High School this year. She is very excited to be teaching in as great of a school system as Walpole. Over just the first few weeks of school, Mrs. Watters began to see the differences between Walpole High School and places she has taught previously. The sense of respect, strong community, strong leadership, along with the abundance of great students all created Mrs. Watters’ excitement in teaching at Walpole High. Mrs. Watters says her desire to teach math is driven by the accomplishment of “seeing the light bulbs go off when [the students] understand a concept,” along with her feeling of content when her students come back to visit after they have graduated and she is able to see how far they have come since she has taught them.
Out of all the types of math that she has taught, Mrs. Watters says she enjoys teaching Calculus the most. Seeing all the aspects of math come together into one subject interests Mrs. Watters and she looks forward to teaching this higher level subject in the future at Walpole High School.
Although she loves teaching now, Mrs. Watters did not initially realize she enjoyed teaching as much as she does. Mrs. Watters dabbled in subjects such as engineering and architecture before she began peer tutoring in college. Inspired by her time peer tutoring, Mrs. Watters realized she loved teaching others and especially loved teaching math.
Outside of teaching, Mrs. Watters and her family love going outdoors. The Watters family takes pride in spending time together. Going on walks, attending her son’s sporting events, and playing frisbee golf are the main things Mrs. Watters spends her free time doing after long weeks of teaching.
Walpole High School is lucky to have a new teacher such as Mrs. Watters as a great addition to the staff of 2012 and hopefully many years to come.
