By Will Tuell

While most teachers and students are eagerly counting down the days until their summer vacation begins, Elm Street’s Karen Fulmer said in an interview last week that this, her forty-third -- and final -- year teaching a third- or fourth-grade classroom at the East Machias elementary school “will be bittersweet.” As much as Fulmer enjoys her students -- every day, every class is different -- she knows that physically she just can’t keep up with another class of energetic and inquisitive nine-year-olds.