The Teachers Who Made Me
From Beacon to JW Reason and back again, Kevin recalls the teachers who shaped his path and still inspire his work today.
Capping off a week of appreciation for nurses, administrators, teachers and Mom…
In recognition of Teacher Appreciation Week, and as I conclude my second school year as a substitute teacher in the Dublin, Grandview Heights, Hilliard, and Upper Arlington school districts, I thought I’d write something more personal for the Beacon by sharing what I remember about my elementary school teachers.
As a daily substitute for two years now, I see how teachers impact the lives of students, through written letters and cards I see tacked on bulletin boards to the hugs and high-fives in hallways.
Even as a substitute, I’ve received a handful of drawings from some elementary students and some fist-bumps.
Since the time I arrived at Hilliard Middle School in 1982 (there was only one middle school and it was at the present site of Scioto Darby Elementary School), I set on a path of writing.
That path continued as a Wildcat staff writer at Hilliard High School (again there was only one, and today it is Station Sixth-Grade School), an assistant campus editor at the Lantern at OSU, and eventually a full time reporter and photographer at SNP and ThisWeek News until its closure in 2023.
I never considered any other job and I don’t regret choosing it; I still practice it even though journalism as I knew it is gone.
But I have found I enjoy being a substitute teacher, while acknowledging I don’t write IEPs, grade papers, or take calls from parents and administrators.
Now, I’d like to share about the teachers I had at Beacon and J.W. Reason elementary schools, some of whom I hope anyone reading remembers, too.
Kindergarten, Beacon Elementary (1975-76), Debbie Taylor
I don’t know what her age was then, as children aren’t yet a good estimator of age, but Ms. Taylor was young. She had an acoustic guitar and often sang songs. She would have come of age in the 1960s, and I recall some of the songs being folk-tinged.
One of them, it seems to me, was M.T.A., a Kingston Trio number about a rider trapped on the underground subway in Boston, the M.T.A. (Poor Charlie!)
I could have heard that in a music class but I learned in somewhere in my early elementary education.
I remember she smiled a lot, a precursor to the stage name she would eventually take to perform children’s music concerts and record CDs of her music: Mrs. Sparkles.
First Grade, JW Reason, (1976-77), Ms. Hanner
I didn’t move from my parent’s house on Edler Street, one block away from Beacon, but I was bused to JW Reason for first and second grade.
I don’t have any clear memories about first grade.
Again, children are a poor judge of age, but Ms. Hanner was older than Ms. Taylor (and didn’t smile as much).
Second grade, JW Reason, (1977-78), Ms. Ward
Ms. Ward, about the same age as Ms. Hanner, lived across the street from the school where I knew her to live until after I graduated from high school in 1988, and until her passing.
I recall she was particularly mindful of all of us, not only teaching reading and writing but also social skills.
She would have remembered me for being the student who mistakenly thought a classmate whose birthday was on Christmas Day (and announced to the class the day before break as we wouldn’t be together to sing “Happy Birthday”) meant that he would get twice as many presents and protesting such unfairness as my child mind then perceived it.
Third grade, Beacon Elementary, (1978-79), Ms. Crawmer
About the same age as my previous two teachers, Ms. Crawmer utilized what was not then recognizable to me as sarcasm to teach proper grammar.
I remember asking, “May I use your bathroom?”
She handed me keys and explained driving directions so as to teach me to say “May I use THE bathroom.”
Fourth Grade, Beacon Elementary (1979-80), Ms. Martha May
Here my impressions get deeper, looking back.
Ms. May was young; I’m guessing our class might well have been her first. I don’t recall her in the building the previous year.
First, she was the one to identify I was struggling to read a blackboard. I was fitted with glasses that year.
Second, she gave a personal gift of her time, illustrating the generosity of educators.
Somehow I learned that Ms. May had mastered calligraphy.
By the fourth-grade, my deep interest in the U.S Presidents, augmented in part by a collection of embossed 12-by-8 portraits of each President with bios, gifted by my grandparents, and a pencil case with two dials that aligned names and terms, resulted in my memorization of all 39 presidents at that time, and I wrote a page of material about each president in a notebook.
Ms. May wrote a header, in calligraphy, for each President, beginning with, “George Washington, 1st President,” and so on, through “Jimmy Carter, 39th President,” which I cut and pasted into my notebook that I still have today.
Fifth Grade, Beacon Elementary (1980-81), Mr. Stephen Seall
Mr. Seall was a big man with a handlebar mustache who arranged the classroom in a novel way at the time: in a block “U” that allowed him to stand in the center of the classroom.
He was a commanding presence with no tolerance for bathroom-pass games but compassion, demonstrated through his empathy when my father died from cancer that year.
Looking back, it was also perhaps difficult on him as districts did not have the infrastructure of counselors and intervention specialists that exist today.
Sometime while I was a student at Ohio State, Mr. Seall passed and his widow recalled the fifth-grader whose father had died.
Sixth Grade, Beacon Elementary (1981-82), Ms. Mablemae VanDyke, and Mr. Robert Spicer
Mrs. Vandyke, who likely retired soon after my class, had the sharpest finger- snap I’ve heard to this day.
Her arrival was preceded by sharp heel clicks, providing any mischievous students with ample warning to find a seat.
This year, fifth and sixth-grade classes switched once, perhaps owing to the subject matter being taught, or also as practice for middle school.
Mr. Spicer, new to the district, would go on to be principal at Scioto Darby Elementary School.
I invited him to my 12th birthday party. He declined but provided a present: a board game called “Master Mind.”
I was in Detroit in April 2011 when he passed from an illness and recalled the positive influence he had on me and so many future students as I walked along the Canadian side of the Detroit River.
All this was more than 40 years ago and so many more teachers that I’ve met are leaving the same foot tracks in the schools where I substitute.
A lot of things have changed, though, as white boards replace black boards and Chromebooks replace Trapper Keepers.
One other thing is the same: cleanly opening cafeteria milk cartons still requires having McGyver nearby.
The question is - did you graduate ! 👍😜