Sandy Blanchard

by Stephanie J. Serrano

Sandy Blanchard reflects on her 30th, and final year, teaching within the Hudson school system. Blanchard, a fourth grade teacher at the Dr. H.O. Smith School, reveals some of the emotion and heart-felt memories as she moves closer towards retirement.

This hard working and dedicated teacher shares mixed feelings concerning her retirement. She says that although she is excited about the possibilities of exploring new places and seeing friends and family, she will greatly miss her students.

One of Blanchard’s favorite aspects of teaching has been seeing children from the same families enter her classroom. She says she’ll miss the opportunity to teach her former students’ siblings.

For Blanchard, much of what she had envisioned for her fourth grade students has become a reality over the years. “Working with the fourth graders has been especially wonderful, because at the fourth grade level, children are still very excited about learning, and yet old enough to work on assignments that foster independence.”

Blanchard says that since the beginning of her teaching career, her goal has always been to have a positive impact on her students. Having been fortunate to have had such teachers in her life, Blanchard’s hope has always been to have her students graduate from her classroom, feeling cared for, understood and more confident as students.

Blanchard is one of five mentors trained by Pathwise Learning. As a mentor, Blanchard serves as a model for beginning teachers. She’s there to help them learn more effective methods for working with young students. “Teaching is a very isolated profession. It’s typically the teacher and twenty or thirty children. Usually, the only adult interaction occurs at coffee and lunch time.”

For most towns, says Blanchard, “funding is usually the greatest challenge.” She recalls a time when she had worked on the budget committee, with the intention of helping the members understand why the schools were in need of funding.

She comments on the rapid growth that Hudson has experienced over the past few years. She explains how families have changed over the years. Most families have two working parents, which makes it more challenging for mom and dad to help students with school projects. As a working Mom herself, Blanchard says she can empathize when children come into her classroom with incomplete assignments.

Blanchard will always hold dear the memories of putting on plays with the fourth grade classes. Blanchard coordinates the fourth grade play each year, and says that the cooperation from the parents and members of the community has always helped make the production a huge success. She also commends her peers, stating, “My colleagues would always rise to the occasion,” when play season came around. “In fact, one thing I always try to emphasize to my protégés is that you can’t teach alone. You need the physical education, art and music teachers.” She says that each teacher a child interacts with will have the ability to make a difference in that child’s life.

A few years ago Blanchard had the unique opportunity to work with Celebrate New Hampshire. She became an associate of the program, while working with Dave Alukonis and his wife. That year, Blanchard led her fourth grade class in making a quilt that depicted the New Hampshire state flower, seal and colors. The beautifully framed quilt which hung proudly on display at the mall in Washington D.C. now hangs outside of Blanchard’s classroom.

Blanchard, dreaming about the future possibilities for schools in Hudson and throughout the area, says that universally smaller class sizes, an increase in computer services, and libraries that offer students more resources are most important to her. “But mostly,” she says, “I wish for my students to leave their classrooms with wonderful memories of great experiences.” She says that with all of the sadness in the world it’s important to make our children’s school experiences a happy one.

Blanchard and her husband, a school principal in Derry, are planning on retiring together at the end of this school year. Following retirement, Blanchard is looking forward to traveling, writing children’s books and helping to finalize plans for her daughter’s wedding.