Mrs. Dear
Mrs. Dear is GHS’s aviation teacher. She’s an extremely creative and hands-on designer who’s had many experiences before landing on teaching. After years of creative work, she found her passion in teaching aviation. Her goal for her students is to provide them with a stable career, skills, and an experience that they’ll never forget.
Q: What inspired you to pursue aviation, and how do you share that with your students?
A: Well, my husband got me into aviation; he’s a helicopter mechanic, and he always said that women make really good pilots, and I thought he was crazy, but he convinced me to take my first flight, and I fell in love with it. I’m convinced that my students have such great abilities, and at their age, they really could do anything. My first flight instructor was 19 years old, and I trusted her with my life. Since meeting Mia (her flight instructor), I realized that there was a lot of power here in the youth and that if I taught them something that could really change their lives in a positive way and could give them a great career, then they can harness that and share it with others.”
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Q: What made you decide to become a teacher in the first place?
A: Well I’m a designer by trade and I worked in the entertainment and theme park industry fioir many many years but during my role as a designer I was able to build curriculum and share that with kids more younger age than high school and basically teach them storytelling and how to bring stories to life with model making and building sculptures, so teaching has always been something I’ve been in love with and been a part of. So, after the pandemic hit life kind of changed and I wen’t back to my values and what really stands out for me is being able to work with students and being able to share my knowledge and experience with them. Then I feel like in high school I was like ‘Dad, I want to be a teacher!’ and he said no and I listened to him and I shouldn’t have listened to him, but the journey takes you everywhere right? So if I had listened to my dad way back then I would have missed out on a whole lot of other experience too.
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Q: What classroom would you switch with any teacher on campus if you had the opportunity to?
A: Well I do love this classroom but I want one with windows and so I’d probably scope out the one with the best windows or best view. Mrs. Kassar has a really cool view of our campus but also I think Mrs. Tanzillo’s classroom and her class seems really fun so I would switch with her only if I can have her knowledge and skills with cooking cause that’s not me.
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Q: If you could master any skill in the entire world what would it be?
A: I want the power to fix anything and have the knowledge to be able to fix anything at any given point. I think it’s such a cool thing because you can be like ‘hey, this thing broke, oh I’ve got it’ and boom, done, perfect!
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