Retiring Teacher Found Her Passion
by Jim Evans

Unlike many people in the teaching profession, Belle Bohn did not have a burning desire to teach when she graduated with a degree in International Studies from the University of California at Davis. There were no teachers in her family to influence her either. She did, however, cover all the bases by completing her teaching certificate at San Jose State before embarking on a successful career in retailing with the Emporium and a decade with Pacific Telephone. But she reached a point in her life where all the money and the fast pace of business life just weren’t enough anymore and "I began looking for more meaning in life," says Bohn. "I wanted something that would offer me more personal satisfaction — something for which I could develop a real passion."

Bohn, who grew up in La Jolla, always had a passion for school, so she began thinking about how rewarding it would be to help young people enjoy learning as much as she did. Soon she began substitute teaching in various schools in the San Diego area before the Ramona School District invited her to come on board to teach full time at the new James Dukes Elementary School in 1985. In recent years she has been teaching pre-algebra to 7th graders at Olive Peirce Middle School and teaching math and science for the District. In 1995 she was honored as one of the district’s four "teachers-of-the-year." Nineteen years after discovering her "passion," Bohn is ready to hang up her teaching career and hit the road with her husband, John, in their motorhome.

Belle and John met as students at UC Davis where John graduated with a degree in Veterinary Science but eventually drifted into teaching too. He is expected to retire from teaching science at Lakeside next year. "We have always been very involved in finding host families for foreign exchange students in Ramona," says Belle, "and, in fact, I was an exchange student myself for two summers while I was in high school. And, while John and I have traveled all over the world visiting our former exchange students and staying in their homes, we have never had the opportunity to really see the Unites States. We are going to visit some of our family in Missouri and then drive down to Oklahoma so that I can research my family heritage. My great grandmother — on my father’s side — was a Cherokee Indian who walked the ‘Trail of Tears,’ so I want to find out as much as I can about her and the rest of my family tree."

And what else does she plan to do after she retires? "Well, I’m part of the Teacher Emeritas Program, so I will probably still be doing some part-time teaching. And, maybe I will get to see my daughters more often." Bohn’s two daughters — Kari, who is attending veterinary school at UC Davis, and Kisi, who has a Ph.D from the University of Maryland in bat research — are both Ramona High School grads and each earned a BS from UCSD.

"I’ve just enjoyed teaching so much," says Bohn, "trying to emphasize to students the importance of math in their everyday lives from adding up the bill at the grocery store to balancing their checkbooks." And so is passion for the important things in life, right Belle!?!