After more than three decades in the classroom, Unaka High School chemistry teacher Jill Cates is putting away the textbooks.
As her final school year began to wind down, the Carter County Board of Education recently honored Cates as Teacher of the Year for grades 9-12.
While teaching may not have been Cates’ original plan for her career, it became her lifelong passion.
“It really wasn’t my first choice; I wanted to do research,” Cates said.
After earning her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in biology, Cates took a job as a job placement coordinator in the Carter County school system. The federally funded program worked with students on a technical path to help them find employment. Cates worked in that role for three years before she moved over to the classroom as a teacher.
In her first year as a teacher, she worked at Valley Forge Elementary teaching classes for the sixth, seventh and eighth grades. That year, Cates said she taught “a bit of everything,” adding she worked as the overflow teacher for those grades.
The following year Cates moved to Unaka High School to teach science. After being asked to teach the chemistry class, Cates returned to school herself, earning an associates degree in chemical technology.
That extra degree opened a new door for Cates and she left teaching to accept a position with Eastman Chemical in their chemical research and development division. While research may have been her original career goal, Cates soon learned it was not where her heart truly laid.
“I missed the students,” she said. So, after about a year and a half, Cates left the laboratory and returned to Unaka High School to teach chemistry once again.
Now she is preparing to leave her classroom again.
“After 36 years I think it’s time,” she said.
After all these years, the students still motivate Cates. The students become a part of her family to her, she said.
“I love that part of my job,” Cates said. “They are a part of my life that I will miss.”
Over the years, many students have stepped through the door of Cates’ classroom, and she remembers every one and enjoys keeping up with their lives and families after they leave school.
“In this career, your accomplishments are seen in your students when they succeed,” she said. “I’m very proud of my students when they succeed in life and excel in their career choices.”
Cates is reminded of her accomplishments with some of her former students every day at Unaka High School; Principal Betsy Oliver, Assistant Principal Mike Ensor, Assistant Principal Stephen Garland and Counselor Lisa McGinnis are all former students of hers.
After so many years at the school, Cates has become such a fixture that many of her fellow teachers did not think she would really retire. But although the time has come for her to move on, Cates said, that does not mean she will leave the school completely.
“I would still like to be involved with the students and teachers as a mentor or a tutor,” she said.
After retirement, Cates, who says she may run a small business which once belonged to her father but became hers after he passed away – Wayne’s Fireworks in Hampton.
“I may do that for a while,” she said.