After 36 years of teaching French, teacher Megan Hurt is retiring.
Hurt is stepping away from teaching to prioritize her health, family and personal passions.
“I’d like to focus on my own health,” Hurt said. “Just being able to have more time to take care of myself because if I’m doing my job right, it takes a tremendous amount of energy and time, and I can’t really give that anymore.”
Beyond being ready to relax, Hurt’s concerns for her mother’s health also contributed to her decision to leave.
“I also want to spend as much time as I can with my mom, who is quite elderly and is in more and more need of care,” Hurt said. “She’s 91 and still driving, but I’m not really sure she should be.”
Hurt has been teaching since 1987, spending most of her career at Lawrence High.
“I taught at KU for about four years, which helped fund my education,” Hurt said. “I’ve been at LHS since 1999, and prior to that, I was at a detention center for a couple of years.”
Hurt is passionate about teaching, but it wasn’t always on her radar as a potential career choice.
“Back in high school, I had a really cool history teacher, and he said, ‘You should be a teacher,’ which I thought would be so boring because I was all about adventure,” Hurt said. “I did have so many adventures for a couple of decades before I became a teacher.”
Becoming a teacher hasn’t stopped Hurt from continuing her adventurous lifestyle.
“I’ve been in a band called ‘Sally and the Hertz’ since 2016, and we’re sort of a folk roots, singer-songwriter kind of thing,” Hurt said. “We’re kind of unique because we have a musical saw, fiddle and guitar in our main instrumentation.”
Senior Kian Foster, one of Hurt’s teacher aides, has fond memories of Hurt bringing her passions to LHS.
“I play the violin, and she’s brought up playing the fiddle with me before,” Foster said. “She’s gone to fiddle club at least once or twice. It’s pretty cool that she’s involved with those sorts of things.”
Now that Hurt is retiring, she plans to use her free time to focus on music.
“I’m going to play as much as I possibly can,” Hurt said. “It’ll certainly be easier to not have to worry about having to be well rested enough.”
In addition to playing in her band, Hurt also plans to indulge in her other passions.
“People ask me, ‘What are you going to do?’ ‘Are you going to be bored?’ And it’s like, ‘Are you kidding me?’ I can think about 100 things I want to do every day. Boredom is not an option,” Hurt said. “I’d like to work at the Humane Society, I like to write poetry, I want to make clothing and I like to garden.”
Despite retirement being a welcome transition for Hurt, many students, such as senior and French III student Ruby Hoffer, are sad to see her go.
“She’s just super eccentric and has this beaming positivity to her that lights up a room. Between playing games and singing fun songs, it’s practically impossible to not have fun in French class,” Hoffer said. “She’s lived in many different regions of France, too, so it’s really interesting and entertaining to hear all of her stories because she’s got a ‘Mary Poppins bag’ full.”
Over her years at LHS, Hurt has many fond memories, but field trips are her favorites.
“Field trips have been a blast. I used to get to take students to Chicago on a regular basis, where we would do many French things,” Hurt said. “I got to take students to France once, and it was wonderful.”
When it comes to retirement, Hurt’s attitude is to finally focus on herself after years of putting her students first.
“It will allow me to invest my creativity in myself and my own works more and less in my students,” Hurt said. “It’s going to be really nice to get to point those energies back at my own self and personal endeavors.”
