Wise work: Cristela Wise

Cristela Wise has retired after a career in teaching, but she’s not taking much time to relax.
Wise has been a business teacher in the Harlingen school district since 1980, and except for a six-year stint at Texas State Technical Institute-Harlingen — now called Texas State Technical College — spent her whole career in the Harlingen schools, she said.
A Harlingen native, she attended local schools herself.
“I graduated from Harlingen High School in 1977,” Wise said. “I’m a Cardinal.”
Wise earned a bachelor of business administration at the University of Texas at Brownsville.
She has seen a lot of change during the evolution of computer technology, she said.
“I still have those 8-inch floppy disks and 5 1/4 disks, because, whenever I teach history, I can show them.”
She first began teaching business classes in the fall of 1980 at Harlingen High School.
Later she taught at Gay Junior High, now Memorial Middle School, and at TSTI.
She recalls the work students had to endure using typewriters to prepare term papers or letters.
“I would pull out my pica/elite ruler to make sure they used the right margins,” Wise recalls.
In August 1988, she returned to the Harlingen school district so she could have summers off to spend with her young children, she said. She taught at Harlingen High School-Alamo, when it was a ninth and 10th-grade campus.
During 15 years at Gutierrez Middle School, she taught seven classes a day and about 250 students each year, Wise said.
Now she is just trying out retirement, considering going back to teaching, if necessary, to help her daughter finance a graduate school education, she said.
She is a volunteer at the Science Club at Dr. Sullivan Elementary School in San Benito, finding herself back in front of a class once a week, sharing online lessons and activities with club members.
Also, she is pursuing certification as a Texas Master Naturalist, she said.
She has stepped up her physical fitness activities, including walking around the Harlingen city lake and spending more time in yoga classes, she said.
Also she is developing an exercise program that will include line dancing, twirling a hula hoop and singing along with her favorite songs through karaoke.
She and her husband are planning a retirement trip to San Francisco.
allene@valleystar.com