Having worked for 34 glorious years, Cheryl Wetzel has decided that it is time to hang up the calculator. In the most storybook of endings, Mrs. Wetzel’s dedication to teaching has led to her being voted Rangeview’s 2024 Female Teacher of The Year. The icon of the Rangeview Math Department deserved a perfect honor for the end of her career.
“I would like to think it’s because I made them work hard. But I also cared about who they were. And they learned some math along the way,” Wetzel said after hearing the news.
While teachers couldn’t vote in the 40th annual award race, she would have been the first vote of plenty of her colleagues. “Cheryl is an amazing teacher and friend,” said fellow Math teacher Melissa Crispin. “She is deeply loved and will be severely missed at Rangeview High School.”
In her many years of teaching, Mrs. Wetzel has left an impact on many student lives. Whether it be through taking AP Statistics, AP Calculus, or another math class that she has taught over the years, Mrs. Wetzel has always formed that bond with her students.
Wetzel doesn’t just leave an impact on her students, they have also left an impact on her. She even went as far as to say, “I love the kids in my classroom. They give me energy every day. They make me laugh. And I don’t know, it’s just, it’s just one of my greatest joys to be interacting with young students.”
Despite how much she loves teaching, it wasn’t until her third year in college that Mrs. Wetzel decided that’s what she wanted to do with her life. Originally an electrical engineering major, Mrs. Wetzel said, “two and a half years into my major in college, I changed majors to math and education. And it’s been the best decision I ever made.”
Now that she’s leaving, Mrs. Wetzel has admitted that she’ll miss a lot about teaching at Rangeview. The one thing she won’t miss: “grading papers.”
However, one of the things that she will miss is her students, and her students are going to miss her too. “Mrs. Wetzel is such an amazing fun teacher and she always makes class very fun but also educational, and just she’s a really fun teacher to have, and we’re gonna miss her,” said Isabella Berryman, a junior in Wetzel’s AP Statistics class.
Mrs. Wetzel is truly one of the teachers RHS alums and staff will be talking about for years to come. “I’m not sure I will be able to go on “mathing” without her,” said Crispin.
