At BSM, there are plenty of faculty and staff who have stayed for over 20 years, some even returning after being students here themselves. Teaching for a long time can be exhausting, but also rewarding and entertaining, and students make every day a new experience.

Education and schools have changed a lot over the years, especially with technology. At BSM, textbooks and stacks of paper have been replaced with laptops, calculators, and Promethean boards. Math teacher Rosalie Goldberg, who has worked at BSM for 29 years, has experienced these shifts and also seen how technology has infiltrated new generations of students. “With how [students] learn and how you teach them, you have to do more to grab their attention, because the kids are so used to doing all kinds of online stuff, so you have to really find ways to jazz up the lessons,” Goldberg said.

Junior high English teacher Dave Platt (‘85) has been at BSM for 32 years, and there have been significant and frequent changes in administration over the last 10 years, which can be daunting to get used to. Despite the changes that come with every new leader in the BSM community, the core mission hasn’t changed. “This place is still the awesome school that it was when I went to school here, and when I started working here, too. Some things have changed, but the essence of who we are is still the same,” Platt said.

Teaching classrooms of students for years cultivates a wide collection of unique and funny stories. Some of the stories include school getting canceled because of snow 20 minutes before school starts, getting called “mom” by students accidentally, or getting lots of random questions from students. “I would say almost every day and certainly every week provides a funny moment for me, and that’s one of the things that has kept me interested and loving this for all these years, is that they’re pretty dang funny when it comes right down to it,” Platt said.

Any teacher who has worked at BSM consecutively for a long time gets to see how their students grow up and find success in their careers and lives, which can be special. Some students even come back and become colleagues of former teachers, like the seven current faculty members at BSM who were once taught by Goldberg. “For a while I was teaching eighth graders in Honors Geometry, and then they graduate, and it’s amazing how these kids grow up, or you see kids that are goofier in junior high and then when they’re seniors, they’ve changed and grown up so much,” Goldberg said.

After much thinking, Goldberg has decided that this will be her last year at BSM. She has taught for 32 years in total, with a few years at different public schools before BSM, and is moving on to new things. However, she plans on coming back to the homecoming football game, Christmas mass, and school plays. “There are so many things I’m going to miss… I’ve had a lot of fun here. I’m going to miss interacting with kids, teachers, their families, and the alumni. I also like the fact that I feel like I’ve made an impact by being a teacher for so long,” Goldberg said.