Karen Green’s days of teaching students about history may be over, but her journey onward has only just begun. After teaching at Aspen High School for 12 years, as well as teaching many more at other various school districts, Green is retiring teaching to pursue her interests in politics and social justice.
“I almost lived my life at school, and that greatly impacted my decision to dedicate almost all of my professional life as a teacher,” said Green.
Green was hired 12 years ago at AHS primarily to teach IB History. It was a big leap for her, and she was very excited about the chance to teach students who cared about advanced learning. Presently, however, she is ready to move on. She is leaving AHS a couple of years earlier than she had originally planned, but she will not stop working all together.
“I am planning on taking just a couple of months off, relaxing, and then moving on to the next thing. I feel like I have a lot left to give, and there are issues and injustices in the world that need help. I have been talking about that a lot in my classes, especially my civics classes, and we have been studying that in my IB history classes. Now, I am really feeling a great need to actually do something. When life gets shorter, you want to be able to do something that will make a change,” Green said on account of what she wants to do after her retirement.
She had wanted to be a teacher from a young age, but also wants to make a change in the world and get involved in law.
“I was planning a career in law for a long time, especially a career in public policy law where minorities could be treated more fairly. I grew up in Native American country, so I saw a lot of the issues and problems, and my father towards the end of his career took a community action job,” said Green. She was exposed to a lot of people from many different walks of life, subsequently, she wanted to impact the world in some way. She ended up teaching.
“A huge part of why I came to teaching, honestly, was because my parents were both teachers at heart,” said Green of why she thinks she wanted to teach in the first place.
Green was born in Iowa, but raised mostly in South Dakota. Both of her parents were educators, so by the time she was graduated, she had already attended three different high schools.
Before becoming a teacher Green attended the University of South Dakota, where both of her parents were graduated. During her college years she became involved in politics.
“I was working for one of my favorite people. His name is George McGovern, and at that time he was a pretty famous senator. He was very much opposed to the Vietnam War, and a very progressive left wing type of man. I worked for him in terms of the presidential campaign, and also in his senate campaign. That delayed my return to school, but after I came to Colorado in 1973,” said Green.
In Colorado, Green ended up getting a job at the state capitol building while also still attending college. She worked hard, and then was graduated from school in 1978. It was then that she got her first teaching job at Westminster High School. Next, she got a job at Cherry Creek where she worked for nine years, and then had another nine years in the Roaring Fork District. She taught at Glenwood, Basalt, and finally was hired at AHS.
Having worked in the district for so long, leaving AHS is proving to be an emotional experience for not only Green, but for her students, and fellow faculty members as well. Green had a few words to say to all of her students, parents, faculty, and friends in the Aspen school district.
“It has been such a privilege to be here. The kids are so incredibly polite and appropriate, and it goes so much deeper than that. Some of them show such a deep regard for what it is that they have learned. It’s been a deep privilege, a deep honor, and has been a pleasure to be able to come to a place everyday where we make time for incredible scholarly learning. I owe a debt of gratitude to all of my students. Thank you.”