figure out how to nominate my mom for teacher of the year!

I would like to nominate my mother for your Hero Among Us section. Yes, I’m biased simply because she is my mother, but she is so much more than just that. She is a mentor, emotional coach, friend, and mother to many. My mother teaches GED.

My mother has always been the most unselfish person I know. Before teaching GED she taught high school English, drama, and debate for over 30 years. Some of my first memories are of the students that she would take in, drive home, or have over for a meal.

She has taught GED for years in DeSoto, Missouri and has provided support and education to over 100 students the ability to graduate. She has housed a few when they needed homes, fed when hungry, listened when they need an ear, pushed (gently in her southern way) many of these students on to a better path for better futures where they’d not have found this path as easily. Rides to and from school are given on a daily basis, as rides to the testing site are given free of charge in this poverty ridden small town.

Countless students have come into her room with no self esteem, the inability to do basic math or only read at very low levels. These kids, as she calls them, even though they range from 16 to 60, have all but given up on themselves. Where they’ll say they can’t, she says you can and you will, and then they do. Some come through her classroom door and receive their diploma within weeks, others take years, and she stays with them.

She receives no monetary payment for this, she does this because of them. As she’ll say, “The best reward is to see my kids graduate.” And you’ve got to know that’s true.

Please consider her for your Hero section as she is not only a hero to me but a hero to the thousands of students who’ve passed through her doorway throughout her career. 7 years ago

in casual conversation with my mother, she stated that she had over 100 students get their GED. Wow! 7 years ago

Until 2004 mom worked with at-risk students in her GED program at the high school. These children, through her and her teaching, and by passing the Missouri Constitution test and the United States Constitution test, would graduate with a High School Diploma and not just their GED.

I’m not quite sure just how many students she passed through, but there were over 50. Think about that. In an area where poverty is high and the drop out rate is high, 50 students succeeded, whereas they probably wouldn’t have otherwise.

She loved her students, she understood them, she appreciated them, and she loved them. She is the teacher who would pick them up and take them to school so they wouldn’t miss. She would take them home on cruddy days. She would drive them an hour away to a testing facility just so they could succeed.

All of these things some people believe that if a person wants it they’d make it happen. This is not so for many of these students who had no car, no money for gas, and very little emotional and scholastic support from those surrounding them. It is easier where I grew up to work at McDonald’s to pay the bills than it is going to school where there is no money to be made.

My mother made it happen for these kids. She helped them give theirselves something that will further them in so many different avenues in their lives. Emotionally, and financially.

These kids love my mom. She loves them. To this day, her house is open to them to come and sit and chat for a bit. No matter what they’re doing, or not doing, or shouldn’t be doing, they are people of value to her. 7 years ago

In the early 90s I had my mother as a drama teacher. I’ve been around drama my whole life and have acted since I could walk, so I do have experience. I tried to goof off in her class, thinking it an easy grade… nope, flunked me first quarter she did. She showed me! I actually worked the following three quarters and did fine.

My mom retired when I was done with high school. At that time she had taught for 28 years. She took a break and worked at a camp site for a year or so, checking in the campers. She very much enjoyed this.

A phone call in 1999 came from the superintendent asking mom to come and meet with her. They needed her to come back to pilot a new program for the students who were falling through the cracks. Not the ones who were ‘labeled’ therefore had special education plans and goals, but for those who just weren’t learning in a standard setting.

This call would change my mother’s direction in life and in teaching. This call also gave her so much more than teaching, it gave her something to give her heart too. She started teaching GED classes for at risk students. 7 years ago

Mom, to some people, has not been just a teacher, but a mentor, friend, and mother. I remember when I was younger she had some students who did not have a spare penny, but had brains. These students literally lived in shacks with outhouses. Of course where I grew up the poverty level was so very high.

I remember two girls in particular. Each Christmas season and into prom season, mom would have them come over and help clean house, watch my sister and myself, and do laundry. Mom would take them shopping for presents and then a dress for prom. What other teacher do you know of that would do that.

In her mind they were not charity cases. These girls had pride, they worked for what they got. In watching me, I don’t think mom could ever had paid them enough! I was the super-hyper-child who was always at their heels.

Mom taught highschool for thirty years. Towards the end of her traditional teaching she would be the one that received the students who needed a passing grade to graduate. Not that mom just passed them, they had to earn it. She just has a way of bolstering the ‘unbosterable’ esteem. 7 years ago

My mother is the sweetest woman I know. She doesn’t cook nor did she enjoy making home-made cookies as I was growing up. However, she introduced me to drama and debate and encouraged me in everything that has to do with fine arts.

Mom was born in western Tennessee in the 30s. She was, as my grandmother put it, a gift from God… afterall, she was born on Christmas.

After her graduation from Wake Forest she taught for a bit in Florida and sent money home to her mother. When grandmother started failing, around 1968, mom looked for a job closer to home. But not too close.

Mom landed a job in DeSoto, Missouri, about four hours from where she grew up. She taught drama, debate, and english. Her most famous pupil was Jay Nixon, Missouri’s Attorney General.

This amazing woman, who God gave me for a mother, always expected the best out of her students. It didn’t matter if they were financially well off or not, or whose family they were from. What mattered were their brains and their willingness to learn. Their willingness to pull things out of themselves, which sometimes was very difficult. She pushed at all the right times, and backed off when the student needed it. 7 years ago