It’s uncommon to find teachers who bring real-world professional experience into the classroom; however, Mrs. Robynn Wilhelmi stands as a special exception. Prior to her tenure as a Health Science 1 and 2 teacher and HOSA advisor, she spent nearly twenty years as a physical therapist in multiple specialties, working throughout Wisconsin, Florida and North Carolina.
Drawing from her distinct professional background in healthcare, Mrs. Wilhelmi teaches her curriculum with a wealth of practical knowledge, fostering deeper understanding and relevant real-world applications within her students. With her dual prowess from the classroom and the clinic, Mrs. Wilhelmi serves as a beacon of inspiration for students to explore medicine and health sciences.
This honor was not fully realized, however, until much later in Mrs. Wilhelmi’s life.
Growing up in Waukesha, Wisconsin, Mrs. Wilhelmi didn’t have any prior education within health science; instead, her most memorable classes in high school were theater and calculus. However, her start in healthcare was initiated after she did a career assessment with her high school counselor, with the results of the assessment being physical therapist, nurse and bus driver. Although she had no prior experience with physical therapy, Mrs. Wilhelmi decided to study it, having seriously studied ballet for many years. She expressed her gravitation towards physical therapy, explaining the parallels between ballet and physical therapy such as the study of movement, the physicality of the body and the health of the body.
To pursue her studies in physical therapy, Mrs. Wilhelmi attended the University of Wisconsin-Madison, majoring in physical therapy. She recounts her time studying physical therapy at university as very difficult, but through the support of good friends and professors, her angst was largely mitigated.
As she was still in physical therapy school, Mrs. Wilhelmi had a vision of what type of physical therapy she wanted to work in: outpatient orthopedics. She explains her predilection to outpatient orthopedics, describing how within the speciality, patients would just go to the clinic, work on their issue, get better, and get discharged; a very direct, obvious and rewarding process. Instead of acute or pediatric care, where patient progress can be slow and hard to monitor, Mrs. Wilhelmi leaned into specialties where patients’ improvement were notable and profound, resolving how seeing patients got better and how their recovery positively influenced their life was one of the most rewarding aspects of working in healthcare. She also conveyed her love of working with other types of patients. Towards the end of her practice in physical therapy, Mrs. Wilhelmi worked in oncology, accrediting the liking of working in oncology to the perspective that the cancer patients had on life.
Throughout her time working in Wisconsin, North Carolina and Florida, Mrs. Wilhelmi worked in a variety of practices, both inpatient and outpatient; private practice and public practice. Within all of these places, she favored UNC Rex the most, for the diversity of patients treated, the good coworkers and the amount of resources given at hand. She points to patients as her favorite part of working in physical therapy, explaining that given her diverse patient load, there was an opportunity to learn something new every single day.
In fact, her favorite part about her working in physical therapy was what led Mrs. Wilhelmi to start teaching. One of the patients that she treated was also a CTE teacher at a local high school, who suggested Mrs. Wilhelmi to consider teaching. Given that mentorship and teaching are already large aspects of physical therapy, teaching did not feel too foreign or far-fetched to Mrs. Wilhelmi, and she seriously considered the career shift. However, due to her familial circumstances at the time that the suggestion was given, teaching was not feasible. As her children grew older, she finally felt ready to pursue teaching, with Green Hope High School being the first school Mrs. Wilhelmi started at.
Starting in 2019, Mrs. Wilhelmi initially had a rough transition from working in healthcare to working in the classroom. Like any new teacher, she recounts some of her difficulties being the logistical systems within school, as well as just generally getting accustomed to teaching in a high school. However, as the second semester came around, she started to feel a rhythm and familiarity with her teaching. Since returning to school from the COVID-19 pandemic– an era obviously difficult for everyone– Mrs. Wilhelmi now feels fully established and at ease with her teaching, commenting that every year of teaching gets easier and more enjoyable.
Drawing from the many similarities between physical therapy and teaching, Mrs. Wilhelmi also recognizes her students and coworkers as her favorite part of teaching. She largely contributes herself to her students’ success, explaining how her passion and motivation comes from helping students achieve their goals. She adds that through teaching, she learns something new and different every day from the people around her, deeming that teaching is never the same; there’s never a dull moment.
As Mrs. Wilhelmi’s tenure at Green Hope extends throughout the future, she envisions herself and her students becoming better at their roles, envisioning success, fulfillment for her students as the vision of the future.
