Teacher Retires At 94 In Los Angeles Unified School District,

Rose Gilbert a schoolteacher who has been teaching for 63-years in the Los Angeles Unified School District has retired last week.

"I'm going to be 95. I looked in the mirror and said, 'I better do it now before I get too old,'" Gilbert said. "I didn't want to leave, but I didn't want to be carried out on a stretcher."

Gilbert has been teaching since 1940s and it's unclear if she is the oldest full-time classroom teacher among the nation's teaching corps of more than 3 million. She took a short break and then returned to the classroom in 1956.

Gilbert joined the staff of a brand new high school in 1961 at Palisades Charter High School, where she remained until February 22.

"She is utterly unique," said Holly Korbonski, who had Gilbert as her English teacher in 1978. "We're all sort of bereft, honestly."

Korbonski now also teaches English, with F. Scott Filtzgerald's "The Great Gatsby" as her specialty. She remembers Gilbert making custom reading lists for each student.

"She was prophetic," Korbonski said. "Her gifts to students continue to grow and magnify through life."

Gilbert, who calls her students her "bubbelahs" noted the change in students over the decades.

"It's the entitlement generation," she observed. "'I'm entitled to an A, I'm entitled to go to Harvard.' I think it emanates from their parents."

Gilbert chose to teach continually although her wealthy husband left her a fortune in 1987. She has funded scholarships for high school and college students and has donated a pool complex, auditorium and small theater to Palisades Charter.