SUMNER – Kate Buck can’t imagine how she’ll feel on the first day of school next fall. For 52 years, she has gone to classes, either as a student or as a teacher.

The Hartford-Sumner Elementary School physical education teacher and coach has decided to hang up her sneakers when school ends in June.

“I feel ready to do something different. I want to leave while I’m still enjoying it, to leave while I’m still having a good time,” said the Buckfield native.

In June, she will have worked 36 years as a teacher, all but four of them in her home area.

Buck graduated from Buckfield High School in 1968, then from the University of Maine at Presque Isle in 1972.

Over the years, she has taught physical education for virtually every grade level. She has also coached high school girls soccer, basketball and softball in Buckfield, along with track and field and volleyball in Limestone, where she taught for the first four years of her career.

She led the Class D Buckfield High School girls to a state basketball championship in 1990, as well as Western Maine Championships in several girls’ sports.

When she’s not teaching or coaching, Buck continues to hay on the family’s former dairy farm. She’s also hoping that the extra time she will get once she retires will allow her to develop some specialty vegetable farming.

She’s also hoping to travel to Florida, Pennsylvania, and perhaps out West, to visit friends and family.

“I’m looking forward to slowing down,” she said.

But that won’t stop her from pursuing other life-long interests: Hunting and fishing, often in a brook across from the family farm known as Basin Falls.

“I like working with the kids. I feel good about providing something that’s fun and good for them. It keeps me young,” she said.

One year, when there weren’t enough physical education classes to teach, Buck helped out a kindergarten teacher.

“The little kids called me ‘Aunt Kate’ that whole year,” she said.