Beth Hahn has taught in the same classroom at Rochelle Middle School for the past 25 years.

She will retire this month after 33 years of teaching in the Rochelle Elementary School District. She’s spent the past few months trying to slowly clean out her classroom, taking home a bag or box of items each day and going through them.

“It’s been tough to clean the room out,” Hahn said. “I took down all my cows, stuffed animals and cars. Every day, the kids ask why I’m taking things down. I always felt like if I was going to spend so much time here, I was going to incorporate what I liked into the classroom and hopefully that made the kids feel welcomed. It always made me feel like I was at home. I found a lot of pictures and old books. I found things that teachers gave me when I started teaching.”

Hahn has taught for a total of 35 years in Rochelle. She started off as a substitute teacher for two years, before 33 years of teaching sixth grade. She started off at Tilton Elementary School before sixth graders were moved to RMS, where she’s spent the past 25 years.

At Tilton School, Hahn taught every subject to a self-contained class. After moving to RMS, she taught communication skills, math and more before teaching only social studies for the past 10 years.

“I enjoy it because for some kids, it’s their first time learning about a topic,” Hahn said. “They might have seen it on TV, but it’s something new. They have so many questions. Teaching kids something new engages them and they can connect it to today. And they can see that what’s happening today isn’t a whole lot different than what happened a couple thousand years ago. I just like to share stories, and a lot of history is storytelling. It’s fun to do.”

Hahn’s extracurricular work at the school has included coaching and refereeing volleyball games and keeping score at various sporting events. She was involved with an RMS theater group in years past that put on plays. She enjoyed finding new ways to connect with students outside of the classroom.

In her years teaching at RMS, Hahn has seen new sixth grade students come into the school’s environment that sees them have lockers and move from class to class.

“It’s really fun at the beginning of sixth grade,” Hahn said. “The students’ eyes are so wide. A few weeks go by and they have it all down. It’s neat to see how much growth sixth graders make. They mature and open up and learn new things and become willing to get into groups. Moving from class to class with different kids helps a lot. It’s fun to see how much they change during the year.”

Hahn recalls looking at the teacher seniority list years ago and thinking she’d never be near the top of it, as she now is. She’s looking forward to traveling more and having extra time in retirement, but said it will be strange to not report back to RMS in the fall.

“It’s a bittersweet thing,” Hahn said. “I’ll miss the interaction with the kids. The cliche is, ‘Enjoy it because it goes so fast’. But it really does. I know I’ll miss it. This is what I’ve done for so long. It’s hard to imagine not doing it. It will be weird walking out the door for the last time. There will be a piece that’s always missing. I’ll look at the clock and think about what period it is in school.”

Hahn called the staff members she’s taught with in the elementary district over the past 35 years “some of the best.” She looks back fondly on participating in the “lock-in” nights when students would stay at the school overnight, along with taking kids on various field trips.

After teaching in Rochelle for over three decades, Hahn often sees former students out in the community.

“When my own children were younger, they never wanted to go with me to Walmart because it always took so long because I ran into students,” Hahn said. “It makes you feel good when you see them, especially when they’re older and come up and say hi. I love seeing what my former students are up to.”

Hahn enjoys her work because she loves interacting with kids. She never considered another profession, and said teaching is molded into her personality, in and out of school.

“I hope kids remember that I made learning fun,” Hahn said. “And that school doesn’t have to be a drag, that they were important as a person and I wanted to know them as a person. I wanted to hear about their lives. They weren’t just students to me, they were people that I really cared about. Hopefully, they felt cared about and had a good time when they were in my classroom.”