The View From a Different Window: ~hometowns are like that, you know?~

I remember well the early April morning that I was sitting in Mr. Hayes' algebra class back at Haven High School. It was in the old building, second floor up on the west side, right adjacent to the fire escape. The door was propped wide open, violating a "code of the future" I am sure, and the fresh spring air was blowing through.

From my desk at the edge of the classroom, I remember looking out at the tree tops and marveling to myself how green and beautiful they were. Perhaps I was day dreaming. To be honest, more than likely I was daydreaming. Yet that memory of a once 14-year old girl remains to this day.

I thought of it earlier and for the life of me, I cannot imagine why.

That room was kind of special. In the years to come, actually 10 years into the future, that young girl who daydreamed instead of listening to explanations of algebraic equations, would end up being the teacher. Her students would be four great kids who were struggling a bit with math and just needed the chance to catch up and on a bit.

They were the first kids to call me "teacher".

For the first 20 years of my teaching career, I was very fortunate to be a teacher for my home district back in Haven, Kansas. I'm not sure that I planned it that way, but it just worked out. Now nearly 40 years down the road, I realize even more what a privilege it was to go back and serve the school district that raised me up. Not every teacher gets that chance and those of us who do, need to serve well.

Sometimes I still smile at the realization that I never even had a formal interview in order to be hired. I was a hometown kid and when that town is small like Haven, most folks know you. The superintendent, who had been there for as long as I could remember, ran into me at the post office one Saturday morning about a month before I graduated. He asked me if I had a job yet and I told him that I did not. Mr. Voth asked me if I would go to work for him in a position he had open. It took me all of a split second to say that I would take any classroom that needed me.

The rest is history.

No one gets to where they are in this life without the help and encouragement of a whole lot of folks. I'm thankful for the people of my hometown who believed in me and knew that I could make a good teacher if given the chance to do so. Half of my career was devoted to the children and the families of USD 312. It will be twenty years that I will always considered well spent.

Haven was a great place to grow up in.

Somewhere along Main Street was a little old lady who watched me walk to school each day and wisely told me to hustle along when I was messing around and soon to be tardy. Somewhere in that old high school building was a secretary who saw the potential in me and asked me to be her office assistant during my last two years of school. And somewhere in that old high school was a dear and sweet man named Neil Hayes, whose classroom during the school year of the spring of 1970 was to someday become mine.

Life came full circle for me there.
Perhaps that is why it still means so much to me this day.
Hometowns are like that, you know?