After 33 years of teaching social studies at Mascoma Valley Regional High School and 42 overall in Upper Valley classrooms, Gary Wells is gladly bidding farewell to all that paperwork, especially the grading of tests and homework deep into the night.
“What I’ll miss is the interaction with the students,” Wells, a graduate of Hartford High School and Dartmouth College who taught at the former Orford Middle School for nine years, declared recently. “The number of former students who have sent me notes in the last month or so made me think, ‘Wow!’ ”
Among the dozens of educators and support staff at Upper Valley public schools calling it a career this month after 20 or more years in education, Mount Lebanon Elementary School library paraeducator Ann Smith especially seconds that emotion.
“We have children whose parents were students here, grew up, moved away, came back and brought their children in,” Smith, who ran the library for 32 years after three years teaching kindergarten and first grade, said last week. “They always make their way to the library to see if I’m still here. When they see I am, they’re very excited about it.”
Now, Smith’s colleagues and Mount Leb’s current students are trying to adjust to the idea that she won’t be there next fall.
“She is the first person to greet students in the morning because she has been doing the ‘early duty’ for years,” library media specialist Jody Stone said last week. “She builds great relationships with the kids and they admire and respect her. … When she works with students on research projects, she brings out the best in them. They always produce exemplary work when they are working with Mrs. Smith because they know that’s what she expects and she supports and encourages them to do their absolute best.”
Smith just didn’t imagine doing it so long, after then-Principal Carl Van de Bogart recruited her to oversee the library in the mid-1980s, in space converted from a cafeteria.
“When I walked into the room they had established as the library, I almost said, ‘I can’t do this job,’ ” Smith recalled. “The floor was totally covered by audio-visual equipment. On top of having every child in the school for a class once a week, that first year I was cleaning equipment, soldering earphones and doing things I have never done before.”
What carried Smith through was the autonomy that Van de Bogart gave her to build the program her way.
“He said, ‘I want you to give the children a love of literacy,’ ” Smith said. “There was no job description at that time, except ‘a love of literacy.’ ”
While whipping the library infrastructure into shape, Smith read to the students, introduced them to books, held weekly classes in basic library and research skills for kindergartners and first-graders, learned what subjects each one enjoyed, and coordinated their choices of books with what they were learning in the classroom.
“It was a hand-in-hand thing,” Smith said. “One of the big things was collaboration with teachers.”
Some of the classroom professionals needed more help than others.
“Once, a teacher came in looking for a book, but couldn’t remember the title or the author,” Stone recalled. “He said, ‘It was a little blue book about a small boy with a picture of a puppy in the middle of the book.’ Ann knew exactly what he was talking about and went right to the shelf to retrieve it.”
That kind of teamwork helped carry Cheryl Shattie through 40 years in the Hartford school system. Her Dothan Brook School colleague Cherrie Torrey has been in Hartford for 36 years.
“It’s a big family, supporting each other,” said Torrey, a 1976 graduate of Hartford High who as a child played in the Pippin Farm field where the school district built Dothan Brook School in 1993. “The staff in Hartford is the biggest asset.”
“It’s a very supportive group, not just colleagues in a job,” Shattie added. “The ride has been much smoother with the people we’ve worked with. If you don’t have that, it can be a very bumpy ride.”
Both educators welcomed the camaraderie amid a whirlwind of changes over the last four decades.
“It used to be you could just teach the student,” Torrey said. “For the most part the social, emotional and family pieces weren’t such a big part. Now you’re dealing with all kinds of issues, including trauma. We’re feeding kids breakfast. We’re giving kids snacks. We’re trying to meet their basic needs to even think about doing their school work.”
“You can’t just know your subject really well,” Shattie added. “You have to know how to read emotions and motivations, things you can’t measure.”
Add to that the proliferation of standardized testing, periodic overhauls of curriculum, time devoted to digital tracking and recording of student progress, continuing education to stay certified and the simultaneous drop of enrollment with annual struggles to craft budgets that taxpayers will support.
“There’s a big population in Hartford that doesn’t have children in school,” Torrey said. “You’ve got a mindset that you really need to change. How do you go about that?
“Unfortunately, a lot comes down to the almighty dollar.”
Still, the Hartford veterans collect intangible compensation every day.
“The third-graders say, ‘Good morning, Mrs. Shattie,’ and tell you about what’s going on in their day and their lives,” Shattie said. “How can you not be energized?”
For recharging herself as a civilian, Torrey is looking forward to taking “a mini-vacation in September.” Meanwhile, Shattie is preparing for a grandchild to spoil … and for better nights’ sleep.
“I wake up in the morning thinking, Am I retired?” Shattie said. “Or do I have to get up?”
Among the 11 Hartford faculty and administrators joining Torrey and Shattie in retirement this month, five are leaving with 25 or more years of service to the district. They include Albert Flory, a teacher-counselor at the Hartford Area Career and Technical Center (HACTC), at 33 years, Hartford Memorial Middle School teacher Joan White at 30 and Principal John Grant at 29, and Ottauquechee School paraeducator Sarah Spaulding and Hartford High music teacher Robert Gattie at 27. Checking out with 20-24 years in the Hartford system are special-education teachers Susan Moore (Dothan Brook) and Anne Marie Hestnes-Harris (HACTC) and Ottauquechee School teacher Marcia Peterson.
Hartford High Principal Joseph Collea, meanwhile, is retiring after 12 years in the district.
Following Ann Smith out the door of the Lebanon school system after 25 or more years in the district are Hanover Street School teacher Judy Jorgenson at 38 years; Lebanon High teachers Jacqueline Clary, Rod Keller and Kathleen Sullivan at 32, 29 and 29, respectively; Mount Lebanon School teacher Michael Wynkoop at 28; and Lebanon High Vice Principal Gina Moylan at 27. Retirees with 20 to 23 years in the system are Mount Lebanon paraprofessional Shirley Green, school district receptionist and former paraprofessional Mary Kelleher and high school guidance counselor Bart MacNamee.
Along with Gary Wells, Mascoma High is celebrating the work of guidance counselor Bruce Barrett after 40 years and of custodian Fred Grochocki after 39.
“Fred is a man of few words, but he has a lot of institutional knowledge,” Mascoma Valley Regional School District Superintendent Patrick Andrew said. “He also graduated from Mascoma High in the 1960s.”
Among the Mascoma district’s paraeducators, Canaan Elementary School is losing Martha Seiglinger after 27 years, while Enfield Village School’s Deb Chase and the high school’s Joan Serviss are checking out after 24 years.
Long-tenured retirees from the Hanover and Norwich schools include counselor Dani Ligett and second-grade teacher Ellen Keogh from Norwich’s Marion Cross School, and veteran art teacher Stephanie Gordon at Hanover High School.
Marion Cross Principal Bill Hammond said that during her 18 years in Norwich, out of a career surpassing 40 years, Ligett earned a lifetime achievement award from the Vermont Agency of Education. Meanwhile, Keogh, the state’s Outstanding Teacher of the Year in 2000, spent 10 of her 20-plus years in Norwich.
At Oxbow High School, where she started teaching art in 1986, Mary Chin is retiring after 36 years in education.
In the Claremont school system, Linda Barron is leaving the middle school after 31 years, while the most senior departures from Stevens High School are music director Patricia Granter at 21 years and Spanish teacher Sandra Binion at 20.
Granter said that she is retiring because of health issues, “not because it’s time. I thought I had another six or seven years.” She came to Claremont after more than a decade of teaching in a remote part of Newfoundland, Canada, because “I really wanted to build a program. It takes a long time to build a program.”
Among highlights she cited for the program in recent years was a strong showing by several ensembles during a music festival in Massachusetts.
“We do football games, parades, competitions,” Granter said. “There’s not a month in the year when I’m not busy. I’m sad I’m leaving, but I’m too darned busy finishing off the year to think about it.”
In the Newport schools, Superintendent Cindy Gallagher said that Charen Urban is retiring after teaching social studies at the high school for 27 of her 32 years in education, while cosmetology teacher Rita Broughall is wrapping up a 27-year career, 23 with the Sugar River Valley Regional Technical Center.
After 30 years of teaching in the Upper Valley, starting at Whitcomb High School and since the late 1990s at Strafford’s Newton School, science teacher Danette Harris is wondering where the time went.
“The knowledge that many of my students are out there doing important jobs in science has kept me in the field,” Harris wrote during a recent exchange of emails. “One of my dear Whitcomb students who I had from seventh grade through advanced biology delivered the anesthesia for my one and only colonoscopy. That was weird and wonderful at the same time.”
Newton School Principal Greg Bagnato said that the students and staff especially will miss Harris’ oversight of the drama program for middle-schoolers. They’re also coming to terms with the retirements of John Freitag as facilities manager after 33 years in various roles (including school bus driver) and of Rachel Claffey after 20 years as food service manager.
“Mr. Freitag not only knows the school, the gym, the library and Barrett Hall like the back of his hand,” Bagnato said, “but he takes time to get to know each student as well.”
Both in Orford and then at Mascoma, Gary Wells made a point of getting to know his students by attending their interscholastic sports games and concerts and other extra-curricular activities, long after the school day.
“I’m pretty even-keeled,” Wells said. “I’m not a person who raises his voice. I enjoy what I’m doing.
“If you show that you care, the kids buy into it pretty quickly.”
After Mount Lebanon’s recent party for its retirees, Ann Smith spotted one of her newest library customers, a first-grade girl waiting for her ride home.
“She gave me a hug and said, ‘I bet you’ll always keep a love of Mount Lebanon School in your heart,’ ” Smith recalled last week. “I feel so lucky on so many levels.
“For me, it’s just been a gift.”
David Corriveau can be reached at dcorriveau@vnews.com and at 603-727-3304.