Claudia Alwood, social studies teacher, will retire at the end of the school year. She joined the Gulf faculty at the start of the 2005-06 school year and has taught mostly IB and AP classes.
Before coming to Gulf she taught social studies electives for five years at River Ridge High School.
Earlier, she taught gifted education for six years at Pineview Middle School.
She has taught a total of 22 years. She took a long break to raise her children after her first teaching assignment at Francis Howell High School in St. Charles, Missouri.
Mrs. Alwood attended Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas, where she earned a B. A. degree in History and Religion. Her teacher training took place at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Va.
She met her husband at Union Theological Seminary in Richmond, Virginia. He is a minister and she initially intended to be a minister also before deciding to become a teacher. Rev. Dr. Jack Alwood is Senior Pastor of First Presbyterian Church Crystal River. He spends three days each week in Crystal River.
The Alwoods have three sons: Josh, a rocket scientist for NASA in California; Andrew, a philosophy professor at Virginia Commonwealth University; and Ben, who is in medical school.
Claudia was born in Duncan, Oklahoma, and graduated from Robert E. Lee High School in Houston, Texas.
