A teacher who spent more than four decades teaching health education at Warwick Academy said her ability to relate to students was among the more memorable events of her time in the profession.

Shelly Grace, who started at the Middle Road school in 1979, said she managed to evolve with changing times.

“That’s one thing about teaching health education … it changes and you don’t get bored,” Ms Grace said, adding: “You can go outside the box when you’re teaching.”

“I love Warwick Academy. I’ve made some great friends who I met here … some of them were my students and some are my best friends … it’s been great here,” she said.

“Time flies when you’re having fun … honestly, it doesn’t seem like I’ve been here more than ten years,” Ms Grace added.

Since her students do not sit an international examination, Ms Grace said, she had flexibility when teaching.

Among other lessons, pupils learnt from her about mental health, basic responsibilities such as mastering parental skills and health practices.

Ms Grace, who is originally from Connecticut in the United States, moved to Bermuda after she applied for a job at the school, which she heard about through a relative of the principal at the time.

She said: “I came for three years in 1979 and look, I’m still here.

“It was an entry job, my first job and I had just graduated in May that year and came here that September.”

Ms Grace said although she was excited about taking up the job, she had cold feet about leaving her family in Connecticut.

She said: “I prayed every night I wouldn’t get the job because I didn’t want to go away because I was the eldest … but then I got the job.

“And once I did get the job I was quite happy here and in my first month I had quite a bad accident and that’s when I realised living in Bermuda was like living in Connecticut.

“Everybody supports everybody, and from then I said, it’s a pretty nice place, and of course I love the children.”

When she started, Warwick Academy was a secondary school run by the Government until the early 1990s, when it became a privately run school that included a primary department.

Ms Grace said the school developed, adding that the evolution “made it quite fun to teach”.

Her responsibilities stretched beyond the classroom over the years, including being assistant in charge of the International Baccalaureate programme of the school.

“This year is my ease-out year,” she said, adding that she teaches only secondary school students.

Looking back, Ms Grace said that being a health education teacher was not initially among her career plans.

The change from medical technology came in her junior year while in college when she had to conduct “rounds” for practicals at various locations such as a hospital.

She recalled being tasked with assisting a colleague to conduct a bone-marrow test as part of her haematology studies.

“The sound of that needle and the patient screaming … that was it,” she said.

Ms Grace is also an ardent collector of antique items and said the hobby resulted in her delaying her retirement and return to the US last year.

“I have taken quite a bit of my collection back home and I have some other pieces that I am definitely taking,” she said.

Outside school, Ms Grace takes part in quiz events around the island and has been involved in various sports activities, including as an organiser of the World Rugby Classic for more than two decades.

“I still go one night a year to the classic,” she said.

She has been involved in golf for decades and recalled driving around actor Lee Majors, of The Six Million Dollar Man TV series, during a celebrity tournament in the 1990s.

The teacher’s advice to parents was to let their children know that there was nothing wrong with failing, adding that “one learns more” from one’s failures.

Ms Grace has been one of the longest-serving teachers at Warwick Academy and said that in recent years, she would often have reminders of how long she has been at the school.

On multiple occasions she would have encounters with the younger students who would sometimes relate that their grandparent was once one of her students.

“That’s when I knew time was up,” she said.