After the 2024-2025 school year, many teachers here at LHS plan on retiring. Three teachers who plan on retiring are math teacher Michael Grenard, Chemistry teacher Laura Karnafel and Biology teacher Laura Morgan.
Morgan has worked at LHS for over 20 years. Before she became a teacher, she wanted to take a different career path.
“When I started college, I was a pre-pharmacy major. I had been working as a Pharmacy Technician at the age of 15,” Morgan said. “After completing two years of college work, I decided to skip the Bachelor’s level of the Pharmacy major track and instead completed five years of coursework and applied directly to a Doctor of Pharmacy program.”
When Morgan was studying pre-pharmacy, she thought about how she wanted to contribute her work to the world. While in college, she realized that in her study groups, the members would talk about the problems with society, but they never provided solutions to those problems.
“That is when I decided I needed to work to solve the problems. As I saw it, there were only two options: from the inside, which is politics, or from the outside by educating the masses,” Morgan said. “I firmly believed that the only path to a better world is to have more educated humans making decisions. That day, I went to the library, looked up the best teacher prep schools in the nation, applied and started packing.”
With Morgan wanting to get a major in Pharmacy, Grenard also had a different career choice.
“I originally was going to be an engineer, but I found I really didn’t like the work. I was tutoring students in college at the time on other math courses and found I liked it,” Grenard said. “I was pretty decent at it, and that’s what kind of drove me in that direction. So, I changed my major and became a teacher and never looked back since.”
Karnafel was inspired to teach Chemistry by her high school Biology teacher. Along with that, she also wanted to work in the medical field.
“I thought I wanted to be a doctor, and specifically a pediatrician, because I love little kids. And I just thought that’s probably what I wanted to do,” Karnafel said. “My heart wasn’t 100% in doing medical school. I mean, that’s a scary, intense thing. I took a step back and I thought, how can I use my degree? And I remembered my high school teacher.”
With every year these teachers taught at LHS, they made some unforgettable memories.
All three teachers’ memories include their students, and Karnafel’s memories involve experiments gone wrong.
“The students were heating a chemical in a test tube that they weren’t supposed to, and it kind of exploded all over the ceiling tiles,” Karnafel said. “Nobody was hurt, but it was kind of, we stained the ceiling tiles.”
Both Morgan’s and Grenard’s memories involve their former students.
“I’m on the senior awards program, so it’s always interesting to see all the students as they’re leaving the school. They started as freshmen, and all of a sudden, they’re seniors, and they’re leaving,” Grenard said. “Those memories, I think, are really strong every year, watching those kids graduate. That’s what we do our work for, is for their success and to go on. But, it’s always a little bittersweet, you know, seeing these students leave.”
Morgan’s former students reach out to her after graduation, telling her how they are doing now after having her as their teacher.
“The messages are similar, so I’ll paraphrase: You changed the course of my life. I am in a better place as a person because of something you said or did. Thank you. These are the moments that let me move past all of the generalized teacher bashing,” Morgan said, “and the physical and emotional toll of choosing a career that is the professional equivalent of an emotionally abusive relationship.”
