Published April 1, 2025
BY NICOLE MIRSKI
With plans to continue her travels and take a well-deserved rest, Dawn Hatch, a current Statistics Applications and Integrated Math III teacher at Carmel High School, is set to retire at the end of this school year after 19 years at CHS.
Entering this new stage in her life, Hatch plans to spend as much time as she can traveling and exploring various places and gaining new experiences. With the newfound freedom of an open schedule where she can plan trips without worrying about school breaks, Hatch wants to take full advantage of this opportunity.
Buying a trailer makes it possible for Dawn Hatch and her husband, Clark, to take longer road trips, like the one they’re taking to Albuquerque, New Mexico next fall. (courtesy of DAWN HATCH)
“We bought a new camping trailer, so we’re going to go up the North Coast, and I’m having a reunion with my college buddies, the 40-year reunion,” says the soon-to-be retiree. “Then next fall, we’re going to the Balloon Fiesta in Albuquerque. We’re going to actually camp all the way there, and we couldn’t have done that during the school year.”
Although Hatch enjoyed teaching middle schoolers at a summer school, she realized that teaching high school would be more up her alley. Hatch got her degree in mathematics at Humboldt State and a master’s degree in education from the University of Texas at El Paso. She says that it is also a marketable job, and since she was moving around so often because of her husband’s work, it made it possible for her to work in many different places.
After teaching at CHS in 2002 for only one year while her husband was stationed at the Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center in Monterey, Hatch taught elsewhere for a few years. However, after loving the setting and environment, she returned to a full-time position at Carmel in 2006.
The impact she has left on CHS and the math department is recognized by both faculty and students alike. Juan Gomez, a fellow CHS math teacher, shares his appreciation for his coworker.
Math teacher Dawn Hatch is retiring in June and getting ready for the next stage of her life. (photo by NICOLE MIRSKI)
“She’s wonderful,” says Gomez. “I have two kids, and I’m very bummed she won’t be their teacher. I can’t emphasize how much I’m going to miss her. She’s irreplaceable.”
Students feel as if Hatch’s classes were not only informative, but also a safe and positive learning environment. Senior Katherine Miller, who took Hatch’s Integrated Math III her junior year and is currently taking her Statistics Applications class, reminisces on the two years she took Hatch’s class.
“Mrs. Hatch’s dedication and organizational style made learning so easy and her positivity was reflected in her teaching,” says Miller. “I will miss her a lot, and I am grateful to have been in her classes.”
The math teacher already has experience with traveling as she took a sabbatical in 2018 to Germany. There she observed and visited multiple European schools in order to learn some new teaching techniques and to get a new point of view.
“It was perfect because it was a reset,” says Hatch. “That was a nice year away from the classroom yet still with my mind on education.”
In her life-long journey to find what makes her happy, from switching from an engineering major to a math major and her decision to retire, Hatch advises students to find their passions when it comes to pursuing job and college applications, but also to take into consideration the probability and likelihood of being able to realistically pursue that career as a long-time option.
“You have to find something that you’re happy with, but at the same time, something that is marketable,” says Hatch. “We all have dreams, but they won’t always come to fruition. So as long as you see there’s an opening that you can fit in, and as long as you’re smiling as you go through it, I think that’s the path you should take.”
