This week will mark the second year that I am not returning to the classroom. After twenty-nine years of teaching, I am grateful for the wonderful people who taught with me, for the fabulous students I have taught, and for one of the finest principals who truly molded me as a person.
I started teaching in Deer Park in 1985. I was a first grade teacher at Parkwood Elementary, and my principals were Harry Fuller and Norma Minter. They were an interesting combination. Norma...the quintessential lady....Harry, the renegade, the yellow-dog Democrat, the "rough around the edges" kind of guy. I was an innocent little girl who had just recently graduated from Texas A&M, super conservative, very sheltered.
When I first met Harry, I loved him immediately. Somehow, he seemed to staff his school with cute, thin, young girls who loved little children. He also loved kids, and he often shared his wisdom with me in the early morning hours when it was just the two of us at the school before everyone else had arrived. Harry had very strong opinions about certain things. Number one, education was important; however, loving children was the most important thing that you could do for them. Number two, relax and enjoy the children. They were all going to turn out okay. Number three, do not sacrifice your family and life for work. Harry always said that if you dropped dead in the parking lot of the school, "People will just step over you to get to their cars." In other words, do not make "work" your life. One of my favorite memories of Harry was when he told me about one of his elementary school teachers. He did not remember a single thing that she taught him, but he DID remember how she embraced the children on the cold playground by wrapping them up in her coat. That story changed how I viewed my role as a teacher. If I taught them nothing more than I was a safe place for them to fall, I had succeeded. I fondly remember Harry spending an entire day of work calling around to various auto mechanic shops, trying to find an inexpensive way for one of our single teachers to get her car fixed. I also remember him helping a young teacher, who found herself pregnant and unmarried, to get what she needed to prepare for a new baby.
I called Harry when I left Deer Park and asked him about what he thought about my going to Barbers Hill. He offered me his blessing and explained how he thought that Barbers Hill was similar to Deer Park years before. It was the last time we spoke. I was not able to attend his enormous funeral because I was out of town, but I will never forget the impact he had on my life. Although he has been gone for many years, I still think of him and smile. I hope that my legacy will be like Harry's. Remember me, and smile. Tell my stories. Love others, no matter how flawed they might be. Relax and enjoy what is really important in life. In the days of state testing, political correctness, climbing the professional ladder....I am so happy that I knew Harry!! Those of you who are aspiring to be superintendents, principals, etc., you would have benefitted spending one day with this fabulous man!!! I think he could have taught you a thing or two about what education is truly about!!! Blessed to have known him.
