A "CLASSY" PROFESSION

It is hard to believe that is has been 21 years ago this month, Labor Day weekend to be exact that I moved to Beaufort, SC. That was in 1985. I taught in Beaufort County Schools for the next 14 years. The first 10 years, I taught Pre-Kindergarten. Because I loved working with young children, I really put everything I had into my job. I made educational games, wrote unit lesson plans, made graphics and visuals to go along with those lesson plans, cut and pasted until I was blue in the face, so to speak. But I loved every minute of it for the most part. I had great co-workers. My teacher assistant was terrific. She really loved the kids and taught me so much about people from "the Island," as it was called. I taught for the first three years at St. Helena Elementary School on St. Helena Island, SC. It was an old building at the time, that sits where the new Early Learning School now sits. The gymnasium is still there between the two schools that make up St. Helena now. I also worked with a wonderful principal named Mildred Wilson. She has since retired, but I run into her frequently, ususally at Golden Corral after church on any Sunday that we happen to go there to eat.

The next seven years I taught at Beaufort Elementary. I actually started the Pre-Kindergarten program at that school. The second year there were enough children for two classes. My friend Martha, transferred to BE and we really had a great time. We did things together as a grade level of two, field trips, movie Fridays, popcorn, recess, etc. There was also a teacher named Kristen, that we become friends with and the three of us made a great team. Kristen taught early childhood special education. The three of us did the school testing each year for the Child Find program. Because of our expertise in the area of early childhood and early detection of special needs children we were featured in a short documentary put out by the State Department of Education. It was a 30 minute TV program about Children's programs in SC and what was being done in Beaufort County particularly, and was aired several times on SCETV. That was my 30 minutes "claim to fame!" We often had visitors in our classrooms and new pre-K teachers were often sent to us to mentor and so they could observe us using the prescribed curriculum for Pre-K which at the time was the High/Scope Model. I really believe this is a good curriculum as it encourages the intellect of the child as they develop instead of pushing academics on children before they are "ready" to be able to learn particular skills.

Anyway, we were the model team. I also did extra things in my career such as wrote and published an activity book in-house that was given to all of the Pre-K teachers in Beaufort County as a resource. I helped to design a special lesson plan book for the Pre-K teachers, that was also published in-house and used by the Pre-k teachers for several years. I wrote grants not only for the school but for myself. One grant for about $1000 helped to fund the writing of the activity book. Another grant gave the school $5000 for special projects. Another year I wrote 4 grants and received 3 of them. I don't know why I was so successful at writing grants, but somehow it came easy to me.

I often thought about finishing my education and going for a doctorate, but I just never could bring myself to actually do it. Everytime I really thought about it, I kept thinking that it would be too difficult to do, and really try to focus on my marriage. I truly felt that was what God called me to do; to put my energies into my home and my marriage. So I put the idea of a doctorate out of my mind.