On January 3, I will humbly take the oath of office and become Rhode Island’s 30th Secretary of State. That will officially conclude my 32-plus years as an educator, coach and athletic director in the East Providence School District.

It will also conclude my time in the House of Representatives where I was honored to serve my community for a decade.

I want to take this opportunity to thank the people of East Providence for entrusting me to represent them in the Rhode Island General Assembly and for allowing me the privilege to interact with your children and grandchildren in the classroom and on the fields, gyms and rinks of Rhode Island for these many years.

It was the honor of a lifetime to spend a career teaching in the East Providence School district and helping, in some small way, to raise the children of the community that helped raise me. It has been a true labor of love.

I hope that despite my missteps and mistakes along the way, I have left an overall positive impression on my students, lived up to their expectations, prompted them to engage and critically think, and always made them feel welcomed in my classroom.

I hope, as we all do, that I have left things in better shape than I found them and that I did so with humility, humor and grace. I tell anyone who will listen that I am able to count the bad days I have had as an East Providence teacher and coach on one hand, and that those bad days were almost entirely self-inflicted. I know how lucky I am to have had such a rewarding career and I know how much I will miss the day-to-day life in “Townie Nation.”

To my colleagues, past and present, of the East Providence School Department who do God’s work every single day with such professionalism and pride, I am honored to have worked with and beside you and I am certain of the tremendous impact you have had and continue to have on so many of our students and families.

It is said that you can’t go home again...I wouldn’t know because I am proud to say that I never left.

Thank you East Providence.

Townie Pride Never Sleeps!

— Amore is the out-going State Representative from District 65 in East Providence, retiring Athletic Director for the East Providence School District and the Secretary of State-Elect for Rhode Island.