Tara Rigby, a Fossil teacher, is retiring after teaching at Fossil for 25 years.
Rigby teaches social studies, world geography, FRCC sociology, Asian humanities, and many other things over the years.
She first began teaching at Front Range Community College, where she taught sociology.
“At first, I never thought I’d be a teacher. My entire family was a family of educators, which made me want to do something different,” Rigby said.
When she was first in grad school, she started coming to Colorado to work with high school kids and younger, as well as being a camp counselor in the mountains.
“When I eventually moved to Fort Collins, I worked with kids a lot and became a unit director at a Boys and Girls Club. That’s when I realized I wanted a career teaching youth.”
She talks about what her favorite thing was to teach:
“I really have loved teaching geography because I think it’s such a valuable thing to learn because it helps us all understand what’s going on in the world today. You’re learning so many things within geography, history, and culture. It includes government and politics and so many other things as well,” Rigby explains.
Rigby has a personal interest in Asian culture, and she loves being able to teach Asian humanities, especially Asian world religions.
She talks about how Fossil has changed over the years.
“When we first opened, there weren’t even five hundred kids, and Kinard Junior High, at the time, was upstairs. We shared a building with them while their facility was being built. At that time, we started off without any freshmen,” Rigby says.
There were many young teachers at the time, and they were teaching so many things since there weren’t as many staff or students. They started clubs, chaperoned dances, and started up programs. Rigby was a part of it all and contributed to where the school is today.
She talks about the most memorable time during teaching:
“The years during COVID are probably the things that stuck out the most. It was a pivotal moment that we still are recovering from. I think that it kind of changed the face of education in so many ways that we still have yet to discover.”
Rigby explains her favorite part of teaching:
“Oh, gosh, you know, it’s never boring. Every day is different. You get to meet the most extraordinary people, all over the world. I’ve been able to meet educators locally who are amazing people, and internationally, amazing people. I’ve been able to see students that I run into who are now adults with kids of their own.”
She explains what she’ll miss about teaching:
“Just being a part of something. You know, this is a huge community, and I’ve been a part of it for a long time, so I’ll miss all the people and everything we built.”
And what she’s looking forward to in retirement:
“I think flexibility more than anything—being able to set my own schedule and spend time with family and figure out sort of what other interests that I have, how I can contribute to the community in different ways. I have a lot of places I still want to see, so being able to do that at a time when not everybody else is traveling at the exact same time.”
Her final advice to teachers:
“Trust yourself and stick with it, because it is going to get easier. It’s always going to be hard and challenging, but stick it out, because so many people don’t, and then we have so many who leave the profession because of that. The rewards aren’t necessarily tangible, but they are many.”