Ms. Waters has been teaching at Franklin High School for a total of twenty-three years and has put on around 115 productions, but has finally decided to retire.

When she first started teaching, she wanted to teach inner-city kids. At the time, Mayor Menino only allowed people who lived in Boston to teach in Boston. So after her student teaching period at Dorchester High in Boston, she started teaching at FHS.

Waters wasn’t always a teacher though. Before teaching, she worked in retail merchandising in the fashion industry and had the hopes of being an actress. When asked why she decided to start teaching she answered, “I became a single mother with three children, I was divorced, retail is 364 days a year job and I never thought I would remarry. I thought I should pick a profession that I could enjoy while taking care of my children. I ended up remarrying, but I fell in love with teaching.”

Her favorite part of her job is the students and they are also the thing she’ll miss most about teaching. Waters said, “I’m really going to miss the students, I always tell people I have the best job in the world. Every day is new and exciting, it’s like a sitcom, constant entertainment.”

Ms. Waters, herself, has been entertaining people for as long as she can remember. It seems like she was born to entertain. As she has also said, “I think that teachers are just frustrated actors, so I give many performances throughout the day.”

As she leaves the stage she’s been performing on for twenty-three years, she knows she’ll be sad at the end of August because she won’t be preparing for the new school year. Which is why she and her husband plan on taking a two week trip to Southern France at the end of August.

Goodbye, Ms. Waters, and thank you for your performances at Franklin High School. You will be missed.