Ten years is a long time to spend anywhere. In high school years, it’s an eternity.

For the past decade, the hallways of Boca Raton Community High School have been my second home.

They’ve held my loud laughter, my anxiety, my creativity, my exhaustion, my growth, and honestly, some of the most important moments of my life. They’ve also held generations of students who changed me just as much as I hopefully changed them.

This year, I made one of the hardest decisions of my career: to leave Boca High and begin a new chapter at Spanish River Community High School.

And even writing that sentence still feels surreal.

There’s a strange grief that comes with leaving a place that helped shape your identity. Teaching isn’t just a job. For many of us, it becomes stitched into who we are.

The classroom becomes an extension of your personality. Your students become part of your story. The routines, inside jokes, newspaper deadlines, spirit weeks, after-school conversations, and even chaotic mornings somehow become pieces of your life you can’t imagine walking away from.

But sometimes growth asks us to move before we feel fully ready.

I think a lot about legacy lately. Teachers rarely get to see the full impact they leave behind. We move through years quickly, always preparing the next lesson, the next issue, the next semester, the

next group of students. There’s barely time to sit still and realize that something meaningful is being built in real time.

Then suddenly, one day, students you taught as freshmen are graduating adults. Former editors come back to visit. Kids who once doubted themselves are leading clubs, writing stories, chasing dreams, finding confidence, and discovering who they are. And you realize that legacy is never really about awards, titles, or perfect moments.

It’s about connection.

It’s about creating spaces where people feel seen.

That’s what I always wanted for my students, especially through The Paw Print. Journalism gave so many of them a voice when they didn’t know how to use one yet. It gave them confidence. Community. Purpose. Creativity. Some found leadership skills there. Others found friendship. Some simply found a classroom where they felt safe being themselves.

Honestly? I think I found that too.

After my father passed away, Boca High became more than a workplace. It became part of my healing. My students, coworkers, newspaper staff, and classroom community helped carry me through one of the hardest chapters of my life. In many ways, they reminded me who I was when grief tried to erase pieces of me.

And maybe that’s why this transition feels so emotional. Because leaving a place tied so deeply to your healing feels a little like leaving behind versions of yourself too.

Still, there’s beauty in change.

Over the past few months, life has reminded me that growth and fear often exist together. While preparing to leave Boca High, I also received the Excellence in Adjunct Teaching Award at Florida Atlantic University, where I’ve taught for over a decade as well. My mom flew in from Puerto Rico to celebrate with me, and for the first time in a long time, I felt something I know many people struggle to allow themselves to feel:

Pride.

Not perfection. Not certainty. Just pride in surviving, evolving, teaching, creating, and continuing forward even when life changes shape around you.

There’s a moment in Disney’s Ratatouille where Chef Gusteau says, “Not everyone can become a great artist, but a great artist can come from anywhere.” Lately, I’ve been thinking about how true that feels beyond creativity.

I’ve always loved Disney stories because they remind us that change is rarely comfortable for the hero. The journey usually begins with uncertainty, grief, fear, or letting go. Lately, that’s felt incredibly real to me. But as I pack up my classroom little by little, including the old newspapers, the books, the decorations, the pieces of a decade spent inside those walls, I’ve realized something important: heartbreak sometimes pushes us toward the places we’re meant to find next. And deep down, I know this is the right choice. As emotional as it is to leave Boca High, I cannot wait to become part of the family at Spanish River Community High School and to reunite with my best friend Marissa, whose own journey there last year quietly helped me believe that maybe a new beginning could still feel like home.

Sometimes the places that shape us most are the ones that simply believed in us before we fully believed in ourselves. Boca High did that for me. And while moving forward is bittersweet, I know the people, memories, and lessons that changed me there will follow me long after I walk out of those hallways.

So, while part of my heart will always belong to Boca High, I’m learning that leaving doesn’t erase legacy.

If anything, it proves it existed in the first place.