Two-thirds of my Life

About that title: Math. It’s what I do. Well, I do other things, but… for the better part of the last 44 years, I have been a math teacher. That makes up two-thirds of my life. Like I said: math is what I do. And apparently I do a lot of it!

My first teaching license was issued in (gulp!) 1974; a couple of weeks ago, I renewed it (Had to pay $35 for the “privilege,” for the first time ever) for another five years. But at the same time, I was filling out paperwork for retirement. They say it isn’t even official until I cash the first check, sometime in July. As a matter of fact, school board member and Ocracoke celebrity runner Angie Todd told me that “the plant doesn’t make it official” when she and Leslie Cole, my principal, presented me with a lovely schefflera and plaque this week. So I can still back out!(photo by Leslie Cole)

The Synopsis

Since 1974 I have taught just about every possible math course possible, from seventh grade through college. I’ve taught algebra, geometry, trigonometry, probability, statistics, discrete math, and calculus. I’ve taught through all the configurations of traditional and integrated sequences. Elementary school (in a k-8 school), junior high (the olden days), high school, community college, and university.

My career has taken me from the northwest corner of the state, in Watauga County, to Ocracoke, just about as far east as one can go in NC. My classrooms have been in Wake, Watauga, Forsyth, Stokes, and Hyde counties. It has taken me from a low-income junior high school to two members of the University of North Carolina system. It has included a lot of time working with at-risk students in extended day programs as well as honors students.

In these 44 years (with only a short break along the way), I have worked with countless amazing educators. All these colleagues have helped me to be a better math teacher and a better person. They have helped me grown in my mathematics skills and in my interpersonal skills. They are too numerous to name, lest I omit someone. (If you are one of those people with whom I have worked, consider yourself thanked!)

I am a proud product of North Carolina public schools: Watauga County schools all the way through high school, Appalachian State University for a bachelor’s degree, North Carolina State University for a master’s, teaching all this time only in state schools, sending my children to public schools from high school through university. Does our system have problems? Yes. Do teachers need more respect, more trust, more compensation for their work. Yes. But am I still proud to be NC-educated and a NC educator? Yes, I am!

The Chronology

I was secretary of the Future Teachers of America club when I was a senior in high school (front row in a very scratchy purple wool dress! In case there is any doubt I am the short one.);

 but when I got to college, I majored in mathematics (and eventually doubled in sociology) without the education component. I never really intended to be a teacher. When I graduated a year early in 1973 (sounded like a good idea at the time, but now it just makes me seem a year older than I am!), IBM offered me a job! Way back then, computers were new and women in the field were rare. It was a great opportunity. But they wanted me to go to Chicago for (I believe it was six weeks) training and I was terrified. The recently-brave Beth would jump at that chance, but that was then. Other things transpired (a broken heart, a delayed graduate school fellowship) and so I enrolled in education courses at Appalachian, and a career was born.

My first teaching job was in Wake County: one year in junior high and two in senior high at Wake Forest-Rolesville. Truth be told, it was pretty miserable. Many days the first year I drove home in tears. The next two, in high school, were not as bad; I actually have good memories of those years. (picture from the WFR school newspaper announcing my first retirement. Gosh! 24 is young!)

Nonetheless, in the fall of 1977, I started graduate school at North Carolina State University, planning to leave teaching behind. Before I even graduated, I started a job at IFRP (now called FHI 360), an international company involved in fertility research and public health.

Three years later, I got married and moved back to Boone. Obviously there was not much available in my new field, and so I returned to teaching. The first year I taught seventh and eighth grade math and science in a K-8 school, Cove Creek Elementary.  I worked with some wonderful people, but this was not where I wanted to spend the next thirty years. And then a door opened for me to teach part-time at Appalachian State University. Perfect! (Sanford Hall at ASU where I had most of my math classes– and others, as well–  as a student and taught as an instructor.)

Working with professors who had been my instructors when I was a student was a pleasure. I enjoyed the older students; I enjoyed teaching higher level math (college algebra); it worked well with my young mother status. In the six years I was at App, I gave birth to three babies. With Rick in sales, we were able to work out the schedule so that we needed very little child care (a wonderful woman named June walked up our very steep driveway to take care of my babies when we had to have help).

And then we moved. To Forsyth County. And Winston-Salem State University took me in! What a delightful group of people to work with. Over the phone, sight-unseen, they not only hired me but changed my assignments to fit our schedule better. I worked with such a diverse group of both staff and students, and it was wonderful! WSSU is an HBCU and the irony of my teaching integration to a business calculus class for the first time was not lost on any of us! But then rules changed and the university system no longer needed “adjuncts” and so I moved on to Forsyth Technical Community College, another welcoming place. And yes, it seems that I am indeed a teacher. The community college student is very different from the four-year school student. Most of them are adults who have been, and often still are, working. They see the need for more education. They are paying their own way. It was eye-opening and refreshing.

And then I realized that I needed full-time employment with benefits if we were going to survive financially. And so I took my application to the WSFCS offices and by the end of the week, I was teaching at Glenn High School! For seventeen years, I drove 25 miles each way to GHS. My children all graduated from GHS, the youngest ten years ago this week. (Where did that time go?!)

 

 

And then I decided I needed a change of venue, so I took my markers, notebooks, and calculator and headed to Stokes County. Another 30 minute drive, with a view of Pilot Mountain on the way. Staying in my comfort zone, with only a few years before retirement would have been easier, but I knew it was time for a change. I was learning to be brave.(First day at West Stokes, with flowers from my daughter congratulating me on my brave move!) Again I worked with some wonderful people, but it isn’t a good fit, and I was actually fortunate to be laid off after two years. Last hired, first fired.

And then… serendipity! Ocracoke School was looking for a math teacher, and I was looking for a job! Which brings us to now. In short order, I had that job: Saturday night email; Sunday morning phone call; Thursday morning Skype interview; Thursday afternoon job offer. Time to be brave again!

Fast forward to August, 2016.  Loaded up the car with clothes, books, linens, other necessities. And headed towards the ferry. And there I was: the high school math teacher at Ocracoke School. Tiny little wooden classroom. Twelve students made a large class. So much to learn. No bells (every level from pre-k through 12 is on a different schedule); no buses (bikes and feet and golf carts are the norm); no cafeteria (bring your lunch or go home to eat). But some things don’t change. Math is still math. State requirements are still state requirements. Kids are kids.

But life and school on an island are very different. Everybody knows everybody, and this is both good and bad. Teachers and students and parents see each other at the post office, the local store, the beach, on the street. All. The. Time.

School sports require great commitment; an away game involves missing at least a couple of classes. And everybody plays at least one sport. A visit to the doctor or dentist means a day out of school. Need an eye exam in order to take driver’s ed? Got to leave the island. Class size ranges from 2 to 15. But the classrooms are smaller! And the problems of having most of your class out for some reason or another still exist. When two of thirty students are absent, there is catching up to do, but when it is two out of four or six, the whole picture changes.

And yet, some things do not change. The curriculum for math courses is mandated by the state. The final exams are provided by the state.  And most of our students go on to higher education, so we must prepare them despite our differences.

But back to my story…. I came to Ocracoke School in August, 2016. I immediately felt at home. My room is little; it is all wooden; it is off the “commons” so we hear lots of the comings and goings; but it is well-equipped with a Smartboard and projector, white board, computer devices for all students. It has been a wonderful place to teach. The first year was hard in some ways, as I learned the ins and outs of life in a fishbowl, where everyone knows not only everyone but also everyone’s grandmother! And being the new teacher is not easy anywhere. But I survived and my students survived, and we had another year. Except for the ninth graders who moved up from middle school, my students and I already knew each other. This was a very good year.(Students from my last class, Math III, waiting to leave on the last day. I finally learned not to say “stay in your seat until the bell rings” since we didn’t have bells!)

But now it is time to end this adventure and to close out my career. And so I clean out my classroom for the last time. I post my last grades, attend my last staff meeting, complete those last seemingly endless reports (only this time the questions include “would you accept another position it were offered?” and “Were you paid a fair wage for your job?”) and turned in my keys.(“Representing” from the island on May 16, 2018, as teachers from across the state rallied in Raleigh.)

Am I done “mathing”? No. I will tutor. Maybe teach some homeschooled kids. And I will always, always see math problems in the everyday world. But I won’t be setting the alarm, which only goes off if I forget to turn it off when I get up well before the appointed time. And I hope that soon I won’t find myself planning lessons in the middle of the night for classes that I am not even teaching.

So here I am. Forty-four years after it began. I guess I really am a teacher. I hope I have been a good one.(On my way to my last day of school… ever!)