Three retirements later, educator closes the book on more than 50 years of teaching

Mike Shea knew ever since he was a student at New Bedford High School that he wanted to be an educator, noting years later that “there’s nothing else I wanted to be.”

Now he’s set to retire from a career that spans 51 years and across several school districts in and around Dartmouth.

Shea’s career began in 1975 when he started teaching biology and anthropology and coaching football at Fairhaven High School. He took inspiration from his physical education teachers who he said “brought me to the fact that I wanted to be a teacher.,” 

“Throughout my career there’s been many hundreds of people that I kind of looked at it, ‘Well, I kind of like this style. I like what he’s doing, or he’s helping me, or she’s helping me, and I don’t really like that person,’” Shea said. 

As an athlete, Shea said his goal was to teach physical education. After three years in Fairhaven, he took a job at Greater New Bedford Regional Vocational Technical High School, where he worked for 33 years.

Shea first worked as a physical education and health teacher, as well as the assistant football coach and a track coach. Over time, he became the athletic director, then the principal and eventually the superintendent, a role he held for six years and a position that kick-started his post-retirement career.

In June 2011, Shea retired for the first time. But just six months in, he received a call from newly-elected New Bedford Mayor Jon Mitchell.

“He was concerned about the education at New Bedford Public Schools, and so he had asked me if he makes a change in the leadership of the education, would I be interested in being the interim superintendent,” Shea recalled.

Shea accepted the position, coming out of retirement in May 2012 to be the interim superintendent for 14 months.

“It was a great experience,” he said. “I loved it. Any time a person goes back to their school system that gave them something, I felt that was more of an honor than anything else.”

Eleven months after retiring again in June 2013, Shea received a call from a Dartmouth school committee member who asked if he would be interested in stepping in as the interim superintendent as the current superintendent was leaving suddenly, which didn’t give the district much time to plan ahead.

After attending a school committee meeting to learn more about the opportunity, Shea was hired and held the position for the 2014-2015 school year.

Shea, who had at that point been living in Dartmouth for half of his life, said “it was fun meeting people that I knew, but I didn’t ever work with.”

Shea’s second round of retirement lasted two years until a school committee member from Acushnet Public Schools called and asked, “‘You have one more run in you?’” and was voted in as the district’s interim superintendent for the 2017-2018 school year.

“Hopefully each place I left in a better situation than what it was,” he said.

Shea called his experience working as different interim superintendents “unique,” noting that he hasn’t seen other interim positions since 2018 or in the prior 15 years.

“I just got very, very fortunate,” he said.

He noted that he retired in 2011 because he “felt tired,” but six months in he asked himself, “should I have stayed?”

“I missed it, but then if I had stayed, I would never have had the opportunity to be the interim in New Bedford, the interim in Dartmouth and the interim in Acushnet,” he said, “So it worked out to be a great decision.”

While Shea hasn’t worked directly in schools since 2018, he remained in education by representing Dartmouth on the Greater New Bedford Regional Vocational Technical High School School Committee for 10 years, a role that he retired from on June 30.

“I have a lot of feelings here,” Shea said of his time spent at Voc-Tech. “They helped mold me where I am today.”

As the Dartmouth representative, Shea made sure the Town of Dartmouth wasn’t being excluded from anything and that Dartmouth had a say in the school’s operations.

“My role was to make sure that the Dartmouth students, the Town of Dartmouth, is not paying any more money than anybody else,” he said.

Shea said that what he wants to do now is “watch my kids grow.”

“My goal from 75 to whatever is to don’t miss out on my kids’ years that I have left,” he said.

He added that if someone reaches out asking for help in the schools he would if he feels he can.

“I will raise my hand and go, but as of now, it’s kind of the grandchildren,” Shea said.