Mary Huey

I am an AACPS: Alumn, Glen Burnie ’63 | Teacher

My connection to Anne Arundel County Public Schools (AACPS) and Glen Burnie High School (GBHS) extends back nine decades to the first graduating class of GBHS. My mother, Amy Eveson, was first alphabetically of the school’s first four graduating students and therefore awarded GBHS’s first diploma in 1926.  Her youngest sister graduated 18 years later in 1944, married her high school sweetheart and had two sons who also graduated from GBHS, the older of whom, graduated from GBHS in 1968 and returned to GBHS in September of 1972 to teach French and English for forty years. My relationship with the school took a less direct path.

I attended private school for the first eight years of my education but when I was facing 9^th grade—and public school for the first time—I begged by mother to let me attend Summer School at GBHS in order to see what public school was like. The experience was wonderful. Little did I know that I would teach at the same summer school years later.

After one year at Marley Junior High, I was on to GBHS for the next three years of my education. These were years of studying, wearing togas for Latin class, trips to New York with my senior English class and making friends that would last a lifetime. In June of 1963 I graduated. I was leaving GBHS behind for the new adventure of AACC, a new community college that met at night in Severna Park High School.

During my two years at AACC I found myself back at Marley Middle and GBHS as a substitute teacher ($10 a day). Yes a substitute at the age of 17.  Things were different then!  In the spring of 1965 I received a call from the principal of the new Northeast High School who offered me a long term sub position teaching math ($15/day). I jumped at the chance.

Two years later, I was 19 years old with an associate’s degree and my choice of four full time positions. But I was on a different journey that did not involve teaching in a high school. No more students in rows in front of me, or so I thought. Over the next twenty years, my path took many turns that saw me between nursing and teaching everywhere from All Saints Sisters of the Poor in Catonsville to John’s Hopkins University to Africa. But ultimately I found myself back in Anne Arundel County.

In 1980, my cousin was already teaching at Glen Burnie. He called one night and said “Do you want to teach math at Glen Burnie?  If so be there at 7:30 tomorrow morning.” There I was the next day walking into the business building of GBHS, the building were my homeroom had been, where I had eaten lunch in the cafeteria.  I was back!

When I stop to look back, I realize that one constant in my life has been Anne Arundel County Public Schools. It brought joy to me as a child coming to plays. It gave me the confidence and education needed to go on to college.  It nurtured the first ideas of a new teacher. It gave me the opportunities to mature and develop as an educator.