Marletta Iwasyk, a Scandinavian Studies alum, retired last week after over 50 years of teaching, making her Seattle Public Schools’ longest-serving teacher.
This article really says it better than we could: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/education/seattle-public-schools-longest-serving-teacher-retires-from-orca-k-8/
One way her time in our department influenced her later teaching career: "A cornerstone of Iwasyk’s kindergarten teaching is her reading program. In the ’60s and ’70s, reading curricula largely focused on sight books and vocabulary. But that wasn’t really reading, she said. She developed a program based more on phonetics that was influenced by how she learned Norwegian."
Amazing!
Marletta, gratulerer! You have spent so much of your life doing the important work of helping get our young people off to a great start in their lives -- take some time to enjoy this new phase of your life! And if you are ever around campus, please come pay us a visit! We'd be delighted to catch up!