Ryan returns to West Side in special education role

An educator for 30 years now, teacher Carrie Ryan is returning to West Side Elementary School in the role of a special educator.

Ryan began her teaching career in 1994 in Worland before getting an opportunity to work as an adaptive physical education teacher at West Side. She said, "I finished school, got married, began work, had kids, did that whole thing, and there was an opening here, it was just going to be one year only."

She ended up staying until 2000, when the time came where she had four young children of her own to take care of. She said, "That's when I decided that this was getting pretty hard."

She left the Worland district to stay in Thermopolis, where she worked running a daycare and then teaching preschool in Hot Springs County School District No. 1.

She would go on to teach at the Northwest BOCES Educational and Treatment Facility in Thermopolis, where students with severe behavioral issues in serious need of developing life skills stay in a live-in environment and attend school that is tailored to their needs.

In total, Ryan worked 12 years at the BOCES center, and nine years in the Thermopolis school district. She ended her time there last year working in their life skills program at Thermopolis Middle School.

Twenty-four years after leaving the Worland school district, she was offered a position in special education at West Side, where she would work closely with students in need of additional learning support. Given the opportunity to put all of her years of experience working with such students to use, she decided to come back.

Ryan said, "It's been a warm welcoming; there's a lot of people that are still here from all those years ago. A lot of things are the same which is great, and some things are new and exciting, but it's all been really good. It's been a good challenge ... People always ask me about the commute, too; that has been fine!"

On the transition of coming back to work with students who require additional support, Ryan said that she hasn't had too bad of a time settling into her role at West Side. She said, "It's been pretty good, I did get to spend quite a bit of time with fourth grade in Thermop, and that's what I'm working with here. Working with the BOCES certainly laid out the framework for various situations, giving me insight into how I approach them."

She added, "In Thermopolis, I taught the behavioral students from all around the state, so I never had that experience of teaching the next generation of students that are the kids of students I had already taught, but coming back to West Side I'm getting that here."

Three weeks into school at the time of her interview with Northern Wyoming News, Ryan was excited to be back in a familiar environment and looked forward to watching her students grow.

"My hope is that all of my students come out of my class ready for the fifth grade, ready for the next step," she said.

Ryan plans to work for two years in special education, at which time she will be a candidate for retirement, but she hasn't decided if she's ready for that yet. She said, "I don't really think about retirement as much now; I really like what I'm doing here."