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“It was 1970, I think,” Parks recalled last week. “In first grade, I had an older, old-school teacher who was more about discipline. In Mrs. Schneider’s class, it was a kinder, gentler approach. She was soft-spoken, quiet. She was more of a nurturer, real quiet. So it’s great my son got to work with her a little bit. He’s in a group of eight kids, whereas we had well over 30 in my class. I never fully appreciated what she was doing at the time.
“I don’t know how she did it.”
For 50 years — 35 as a teacher in grades one to four and 15 as a para-educator — Schneider has helped countless children through Cornish School. As she counted down the days to retirement, she looked back at a career that began in a rush.
“When I went to the superintendent (George Disnard), I was just looking for a substituting job, but they were going crazy because they had so many kids, and they hired me,” Schneider, now 81, recalled last week. “In those early years, we had a teacher consultant visit classes and say, ‘I can’t come in: There are too many bodies.’ ”
The school’s surfeit of students was such that the school district granted Schneider, a mother of four living in Claremont, dispensation to teach while completing her bachelor’s degree.
“I finally got it from Plymouth State College in 1980,” Schneider said. “I was taking care of my kids, and taking care of my in-laws, so I could only take a couple of courses a year. I look back, and I don’t know where the energy came from.”
Some of the energy, she figures, she inherited.
“My mother was a teacher in Claremont, and I always wanted to be a teacher,” Schneider said. “I was an only child, so I wanted a lot of kids of my own.”
By the time she retired from full-time teaching and switched to paraprofessional work four mornings a week, Schneider already was starting to welcome the children of former students.
“It’s been 15 or 20 years now,” Schneider said. “A lot of them come back and reminisce with me.”
She might have kept going, she added, except that she now struggles to stand up for as long as she used to.
“I’d have to use a walker,” she said, “and I don’t want them to see me like that.”
Current and former students and colleagues were expected to walk down Memory Lane with Schneider on Monday, when the school unveiled a granite bench with an inscription honoring her service. Steve Parks had suggested the monument, and a community collection raised the money in short order.
“I wasn’t really afraid of my other teachers, but there was a certain expectation that you’d better do your work if you knew what was good for you,” Parks said. “In second grade, I wanted to do it so that she’d be proud of me. She was always patient and real kind. She made enough time for every student in the class.
“When I started third grade, after the first week I wanted to go back to her class.”
More than 45 years later, Schneider is joining the annual wave of educators calling it a career, though most of the others, among them Cornish Elementary School second-grade teacher Dawn Crary, are at least 15 years younger.
They include Lebanon High School math teacher Susan Seamans, who over the last couple of weeks was fielding appreciation from colleagues and students who crossed her path during her 43 years on Evans Drive.
“It’s been quite a whirlwind,” Seamans, a 1970 graduate of Mascoma Valley Regional High School and a 1974 graduate of Wellesley College, said on Friday. “Everybody was so wonderful. It was quite amazing. … The students have been bringing me little gifts and cards, and just saying nice things. … And when we got together (on Thursday), the other teachers in the department did a funny skit to keep us all from crying.”
Seamans said that she started considering retirement while caring for her mother for several years before her mother’s death at 101 in 2016.
It also made it easier that her husband, Terry Reynolds, a tutor and later a paraprofessional working with special-education students, also decided to retire after 30 years.
“I still feel energetic, like I could keep on teaching,” Seamans said. “Terry loves his kids, he loves working with them, but he decided it might be time to do something different. He said that if he’d stayed and next year went by my classroom, to see a different teacher in there would be weird.”
Lebanon Principal Ian Smith expects to need some adjustment time, too, after three years working with Seamans, who steered Smith through Algebra II when he was a sophomore at Lebanon.
“Sue was patient, was kind and had high expectations, and I tried to meet them,” Smith, who graduated in 1988, recalled on Friday. “She was there every day. She was consistent, she was prepared and she knew her material. I wasn’t as much of a math student as much as I enjoyed history. I was a social-studies guy. But I understood Sue’s stature in the building when I got here as principal. I liked the way she approached the business of teaching.”
Seamans credits some of her approach to Richard Moulton, the future Mascoma principal with whom she took eighth-grade algebra.
“Part of it was that I didn’t want to treat the kids like he did,” Seamans said with a laugh. “He was very, very strict. … For a while I was scared to death of him. But after I got used to him, I realized he was a really good teacher, and knew his stuff.”
Seamans, who grew up in Grafton, knew her stuff well enough to compete with math whizzes from other schools for Mascoma’s math-league team. Upon arriving at Lebanon as a teacher in 1974, she coached the seniors on the math team and eventually took over the program.
“I loved the problem solving,” Seamans said. “I was pretty good at it, and I enjoyed helping my friends. I guess that carried over.”
In addition to Seamans and Reynolds, the Lebanon School District last week bade farewell to 12 educators and staff. They include Lebanon Middle School co-Principal Martha Langill, whose 30 years in the system included 25 in charge of Seminary Hill School. Also leaving are special education teachers Rosanna Kerin (Hanover Street School, 39 years of service) and Ann Richardson (Lebanon High, 22 years), and Hanover Street School teacher Joan Sirlin (31 years).
“When I came in as principal there were several teachers who were there when I was a student,” Smith said. “People like (physical education teacher) Deb Beach as well as Sue and Terry Reynolds. Yesterday (Thursday) in our last staff meeting, (teacher) Andrew Gamble noted how many young teachers were there — a different demographic than when he started 18 years ago. It doesn’t make me feel old, so much, but it sure makes me feel older.”
Seamans can relate.
“I’ve got a lot of kids who say, ‘My dad had you’ or ‘my mom had you,’ ” Seamans said. “The other day, I had someone say, ‘My grandson is going to be coming to the high school next year.’ ”
David Corriveau can be reached at dcorriveau@vnews.com and at 603-727-3304.