Love, Mrs. Euker

Love, Mrs. Euker is a series of vignettes written by a 40-year-old former teacher who returns to the classroom after ten years of retirement, leaving the calm and comfort of her well-ordered suburban life as a wife and mother for the wilds of a modern blackboard jungle. While she aspired to have a positive influence on her students, what she didn't foresee was the unexpected impact returning to teaching would have on her. In the true spirit of coddiwompling defined as traveling in a purposeful manner towards a vague destination, this Baltimore-based schoolteacher left her domestic cocoon and journeyed headlong into an unforeseen and unsettling future. While her family remained her central focus, she discovered a different dimension to her life, and in teaching teenagers, learned much about herself. Experience the joys and heartbreak of a life-changing career in education as you stand in a teacher's shoes as she cheers her students' success, grieves over lives interrupted, and experiences the challenge and rewards of preparing young people for an uncharted future. With wit, hard-earned wisdom and confessed foibles here and there, this veteran teacher presents a candid, insightful perspective of a career in education in all its tedium and shining moments of glory. In her account of twenty years of coaching, instructing, guiding and counseling students, live through the triumph and tears as she recounts her "purposeful journey towards a vague destination." In this tribute to her former students at Hereford High School in suburban Baltimore, she writes for everyone who has ever sat in a classroom, or held a piece of chalk in their hand, or dreamed of inspiring the future. This is a love letter to teachers and their students everywhere.

Love, Mrs. Euker is a series of vignettes written by a 40-year-old former teacher who returns to the classroom after ten years of retirement, leaving the calm and comfort of her well-ordered suburban life as a wife and mother for the wilds of a modern blackboard jungle. While she aspired to have a positive influence on her students, what she didn't foresee was the unexpected impact returning to teaching would have on her. In the true spirit of coddiwompling defined as traveling in a purposeful manner towards a vague destination, this Baltimore-based schoolteacher left her domestic cocoon and journeyed headlong into an unforeseen and unsettling future. While her family remained her central focus, she discovered a different dimension to her life, and in teaching teenagers, learned much about herself. Experience the joys and heartbreak of a life-changing career in education as you stand in a teacher's shoes as she cheers her students' success, grieves over lives interrupted, and experiences the challenge and rewards of preparing young people for an uncharted future. With wit, hard-earned wisdom and confessed foibles here and there, this veteran teacher presents a candid, insightful perspective of a career in education in all its tedium and shining moments of glory. In her account of twenty years of coaching, instructing, guiding and counseling students, live through the triumph and tears as she recounts her "purposeful journey towards a vague destination." In this tribute to her former students at Hereford High School in suburban Baltimore, she writes for everyone who has ever sat in a classroom, or held a piece of chalk in their hand, or dreamed of inspiring the future. This is a love letter to teachers and their students everywhere.

Susan Cunningham Euker was born and raised in Baltimore Maryland. She attended Towson High School, received her B.A. degree in Health and Physical Education from Gettysburg College, graduating with the Frank Kramer Education Award, and earned her M.S. in Health Science from Towson University. Over the years, she has taught state certification courses for high school teachers in sexuality education through Loyola and Towson Universities, and has been a conference lecturer on motivational health education techniques at Salisbury University and McDaniel College (formerly Western Maryland College). Her op-ed pieces have appeared in The Baltimore Sun as well as the Los Angeles Times, and her short stories have been published in Readers' Digest, Chicken Soup for the Soul, and Heart at Work. She has also written and reviewed curriculum for high school health education and system wide sexual harassment for the Baltimore County Board of Education. Euker received the Stevenson University Favorite Teacher Award, (formerly Villa Julie College), the Hereford High School Harbinger senior class dedication, the WBAL Television Class Act Award for outstanding teaching and service, the Simon A. McNeely Health Education Award, presented by the Maryland Association for Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance (MAHPERD) professional organization, and the Baltimore County Chamber of Commerce Excellence in Teaching Award. She was also a Walt Disney American Teacher of the Year Award nominee. Euker is now retired from full-time teaching, but often substitutes at several local high schools. She agrees with the 13thcentury Persian poet Rumi, who wrote, "Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I want to change myself." She lives in Bel Air, Maryland near her three children and six grandchildren.