Molly Guadiamos
After 30 years of teaching Spanish within the FUHSD district, including serving as a World Department Lead for over a decade at MVHS, Spanish teacher Molly Guadiamos has decided to retire at the end of the 2023-2024 school year.
With a long bucket list filled with places she wants to visit post-retirement, Guadiamos feels the pay she currently receives makes this year the ideal time to retire. As a part of the State Teachers Retirement System, teachers get a multiplier on their pay, which is dependent on two factors: their age and the time they have served in the FUHSD district. The highest possible multiplier is at 61.5 years old and 30 years of teaching — and recently having reached this multiplier is one of the factors behind her retirement. Though the pay teachers get is constantly changing, oftentimes going up due to base salary increases, her pay multiplier has already reached its highest value.
“I think I'm ready to retire now so that I can still get out — I have a lot of really active plans for my retirement,” Guadiamos said. “I like to go and do active things and I want to still be able to do that when I retire, to have my health and my fitness to go and pursue those adventures. So that's it. I think 30 years is a good run.”
Back in high school, Guadiamos had concurrently enrolled in French and Spanish, where she found a passion for foreign languages and culture. After graduating from college with a Spanish degree, Guadiamos landed at Homestead High School, teaching Spanish for seven years. Eventually, she settled into a twenty-three-year-long employment at MVHS.
“I think each school has its own culture and when I left Homestead, there was a bit of tension between the administration and the teachers,” Guadiamos said. “Here, I just loved it right away because the administration was very supportive and worked with the teachers. Also, within my department here, we really collaborate and really communicate — we're very much on the same page.”
Guadiamos believes that teaching encompasses a lot of small challenges., Ffor example, she often experiences the challenge of having to adapt and constantly create new content. However, she finds that figuring out the best and most efficient way to teach challenging subjects and helping students discover their own ways of learning, their “little keys to be unlocked,” are aspects of teaching that, while at times is challenging, in the end, is rewarding.
“You're just kind of just barely scraping by as a new teacher — you're having to create everything from scratch instead of just being able to rework it or tweak it, so it's really kind of frantic to be a new teacher and just learn your craft,” Guadiamos said. “Whereas now it's more settled in and I have a lot more tools in my toolbox than I did then. But I'm still creating new things and still trying to try new things also. So there I think that aspect never goes away.”
