Before becoming a teacher at Waterford High School, some teachers had other jobs. Zeth Nolda is currently a physical education teacher. Before becoming a teacher, Nolda worked in Jacksonville, in remodeling and roofing. His career was mostly doing drywall and roofing for buildings. 

Jacksonville is very hot, with temperatures reaching up to 95 degrees. When he got sick of the heat, he decided to become a teacher. Now that he is a teacher, he enjoys it and doesn’t regret changing his mind and coming to WHS.

Suzanne Sturm is one of our math teachers at WHS. Before becoming a teacher, she worked at Millstone Nuclear Power Plant (Millstone Unit 3). She worked as a Shift Technical Advisor (STA). 

Even though Millstone paid more, Sturm decided to change careers because, with being a shift worker and not having a stable schedule, it was hard to take care of her children. Sturm found the perfect opening to do this when her unit wanted to restructure and started offering a buyout to all their employees for ten months’ pay.

Once she took the offer, she was able to get more involved with her children’s activities and sports, like volunteering at Oswegatchie Elementary School (OSW). Her volunteering mainly consisted of helping teachers make copies, reading to the students, and doing centers with the students. She also volunteered by helping OSW’s plays for 11 years. 

While she worked as a part-time contractor at Millstone Unit 3, she went to school to get a teaching degree. Once she got her teaching degree, since she already had her engineering degree, she decided to be a math teacher. 

Even though there were some downsides, she liked her job a lot. There were a lot of regulations that she had to follow, so it could be stressful trying to follow them all, but overall it was a wonderful experience because she got to collaborate with many smart people. 

She suggests that everyone follows their paths and always keeps their options open and not just to follow what their family wants. Sturm replied, “I changed my major when I was forty-four years old”.

Kirk Samuelson is currently the principal of Waterford High School. Before becoming an educator, Samuelson was the general manager and owner of Donavan’s Reef, a restaurant in Branford, Connecticut.

Samuelson had received his Masters in education from Quinnipiac University and wanted to pursue a career in education. He started working at Donavan’s Reef thinking it was going to be a short-term venture, however, his venture lasted for seven years. After seven years, he finally decided it was time to get back to his original goal: teaching.

There were both good and bad aspects to the job because, on the good side, it helped Samuelson manage his college debt, however, the schedule was demanding with long hours, late nights, and even working holidays. He says “[it] made it difficult to maintain a work-life balance, [though] working in the restaurant business is the best part-time job there is.”

Samuelson did not regret leaving his job in the restaurant because he loved being a high school biology teacher in Guilford and the science program coordinator at Daniel Hand High School, just as much as he currently loves being a principal at Waterford High School. 

Samuelson stated, “Teaching provided a greater sense of purpose and a much better work-life balance—though, like many in the profession, I wish it had been better compensated.”

Chris Gamble, who currently works in our school’s history department, used to be a law enforcement officer. 

When Gamble went to college, he was interested in two professions, teaching and law enforcement. Before becoming a teacher, he went to the police academy for 20 weeks in Meridian and graduated in August of 1993. He was one of the first ten officers hired by the Mashantucket Pequot Tribe and worked there for a year; he then transferred to the Ledyard Police Department in 1994 and worked there for a year. 

Gamble liked the law enforcement jobs he had, but didn’t think it was for him. He decided to go back to college and get a teaching certification. He student-taught at Waterford High School in 1995 and got hired here in 1996. Until his certification expired in 2001, while he was teaching, he was a part-time conservation officer for the state and also worked part-time at Groton Long Point.

Gamble explained that the worst part of law enforcement is having to negatively interact with people you know. Gamble grew up in the town he worked in and had to arrest people he went to school with, played football with, wrestled with, and grew up with. The positive part was helping people with problems and making a positive difference in people’s lives. 

Gamble doesn’t regret becoming a teacher. Being in law enforcement was a good experience for him, but it was the right choice to become a teacher, where he now teaches the criminal justice class.

He explained that being in law enforcement and becoming a teacher is similar, “Although they are both challenging professions, I would recommend to young people pursuing a career in law enforcement or education.”

JoAnn Dumin currently works in the science department for Waterford High School and used to work at Pfizer. She was a Senior Principal Scientist who ran a research program in the discovery area of neuroscience. The research program that she was running was based on Alzheimer’s Disease.

The reason why she decided to change careers was because Pfizer was crazy as well as the part of her job that allowed her to teach. It made Dumin want to be a role model and be able to give insights. 

She became a teacher because she wanted to show the kids that they could do whatever they wanted and that they didn’t have to be stuck with the jobs that their parents worked. 

The best thing about Dumin’s job before teaching was that she could work with top experts in the field and had access to people all over the world who were doing “cool science”. She also got to travel to different places and meet new people. 

Dr. Dumin mostly doesn’t regret becoming a teacher. Her favorite part is finding out where her students are going to college and what they want to do when they “get big”. She asks her students, “What do you want to do when you get big?”

One quote that Dumin thinks is important for students to know is from Gilda Radner, who said, “If you reach for the roof, you stay on the ground. If you reach for the stars, you land on the roof.”

Andrew Walker used to work at a sausage casing factory in Holland while he played baseball for the Holland Professional Baseball League. He worked there once a week for five hours a day.

Walker’s decision to become a teacher when he came back to the United States was because, in the baseball club he played in, he got to work with younger people. He enjoyed the coaching and teaching aspect of it. When he came back to the United States, he went to school and got a teaching degree.

The worst thing when he worked in the sausage casing factory was that while packaging the sausages, the salt on it would peel the skin off of his fingertips.

Walker likes that he decided to become a teacher when he came back because he gets paid for getting involved, something that he loves to do.