After 28 years in the classroom, art teacher Chelle Cox is retiring.

While she’s ending her time as a high school teacher, that’s not how it started. In August 1985, she started her career teaching elementary students.

“I was teaching elementary school over in Park Hill School District, and excited but a little bit nervous,” Cox said. “Really big classes, and it just felt so different from student teaching because I wasn’t on my own. I didn’t have somebody else there with me. Now that I am teaching high school, it is still like that.”

She said her biggest reward was when someone tried something new and then was proud of the work they produced.

“I have learned how important it is to be there for my students,” Cox said. “Learning to make art is important, but not the most important job.”

Cox said she wanted her students to feel that her classroom was a safe place. She hoped to always engage and support her students to try their best.   

“This is a safe place to come by. They are always welcome,” Cox said. “I will be supportive in whatever they might be doing or help in any way that I can and when they are struggling as well.” 

And she said sometimes when she thought maybe she hadn’t reached a student, she found out that she had.

“There’ll be times where it’ll be a student that maybe I didn’t see very much in class they weren’t engaged, or I didn’t know they enjoyed what we were doing because they didn’t act like it,” Cox said. “But then when I see them outside of class, they’d hug me and say, ‘I miss your class.’”    

She said she would miss everything about her students.  When she started teaching, she felt like she won the lottery because she loved instilling new skills into her students.   

“I’ll miss everything about it. Especially the kids; that that’s always been my priority,” Cox said.  

When COVID hit, she said she got the chance to work with students with varying personalities and really valued the connections they made through art. She saw that for many of them, art became a powerful way to handle tough times. 

“It helps them cope or express themselves or gives them an out a way to talk without using their voice,” Cox said.  

Cox, who taught at the school since it first opened in 2008 and gave the staff commencement speech for the Class of 2025, had plans for her future. As her time in the classroom came to a close, she said she planned to spend time with family, play the flute and travel.