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Floor Speech

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Mr. COURTNEY. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor and congratulate a devoted public servant, Elissa DeVito of Preston, Connecticut. Elissa is retiring from teaching at Waterford Public Schools after over 30 years of dedicated service. Her decades of outstanding expertise and dedication to her community will be sorely missed.

Elissa spent her early life in Rockville, Maryland before attending Syracuse University where she met the love of her life, Michael. Elissa moved to Connecticut in May of 1991. She and Michael lived in Groton and Mystic before settling in Preston in 1994, where they have been ever since.

Elissa chose a path of public service and has dedicated her life to education and teaching. For decades, she has worked as a teacher, helping to shape the minds of generations of children. She began her career with Waterford Public Schools on November 30, 1992, at Oswegatchie Elementary School. She stayed at Oswegatchie until the fall of 2009 when she transferred to Quaker Hill Elementary School. While Elissa has spent most of her career working with kindergarteners, she has also spent a few years working with first and second graders.

Always going above and beyond to create a caring and supportive environment for the students that entered her classroom, it has been Elissa's mission to provide the next generation with the tools they need to succeed. Elissa is a natural educator and has been known as an expert at teaching young students to read. Students go from learning the letters of the alphabet to reading books by the end of their time in her classroom.

As she enters retirement, Elissa is looking forward to spending more time reading, one of her favorite pastimes, visiting her daughters, Samantha, Emily, and Alexa and going on trips with her husband Michael.

Mr. Speaker, it is an honor to represent constituents as devoted and compassionate as Elissa. Elissa has impacted hundreds of students during her career. Elissa will leave behind an expert skill set and enthusiasm that will be hard to replace, but her 33 years of unwavering dedication to the Waterford community will leave a legacy for years to come through each and every one of her students. Mr. Speaker, I ask that my colleagues join me in recognizing Elissa DeVito's immeasurable contributions and congratulating her on her well-earned retirement.

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