Debra Harrison retires from MHS

After 17 years of teaching English to youths in 11th and 12th grade, Debra Harrison retires from Moorcroft Secondary School.

Harrison began her career in an entirely different field.

"When I initially got my degree, it was a nonteaching English degree and I worked for the State of South Dakota doing grants through the highway safety office, a facilitator for grants and safety," she says.

With the change of administration and the reorganization of the agency, she found her position, along with the rest of the staff, cut.

This, though, did not stop the young Harrison from moving forward.

"I had been thinking about going back to get my teaching certification and, to me, it was kind of a sign that I needed to make a change," she says. "My girls were really young and I wanted more alignment with their schedules so I went back and got my teaching certification."

She was snapped up as soon as she completed her student teaching in Sturgis.

"I was hired immediately in Bone Still, SD. They called the high school to set up an appointment with me to come over and interview and hired me on the spot," she recalls.

The new teacher taught for only a year and a half in the small South Dakota town. "Bone Still was too far from home... I moved to Hot Springs for a year."

After the district eliminated seven positions, one of which was hers, Harrison went to Fort Pier for six years and Wall for a year after that, not satisfied with the curriculum she was teaching.

The salary was insufficient for her living expenses and "I wasn't teaching what I wanted to teach. I was a part time librarian and I hated it there." Harrison decided to get out of education, "but my mom said, 'before you get out of it see what's available in Wyoming".

She followed her mother's advice and, when she finished her first Masters degree in her first year at Moorcroft's secondary school, she was making twice as much as she had been in South Dakota and was close enough to family to be able to visit easily on her time off.

Harrison has never looked back and after 17 years with Moorcroft Secondary in a 27-year career, she is not done.

"I'm retiring from education, but I'm going into the field of instructional design," she says. "Instructional design is creating e-learning, virtual ed-trainings for corporations. It's all on the computer."

She is also keeping her hand in education, on a non-teaching level, to help those not specifically trained in the field of education to understand the state-mandated standards for her subject. "I'm on the Wyoming English Language Arts Standards Review Board and we're in the middle of revising the standards for English language arts K-12 in Wyoming."

The retired English teacher was concerned that she would be unable to finish the program with her fellow reviewers as the work is not yet complete, but when she spoke to the project supervisor, she was assured that retired teachers are "good sources of information", and she was welcome and encouraged to continue.

Harrison is actively moving on with the sale of her Moorcroft home and is looking forward to working remotely and spending more time with family in South Dakota.