Principals recall past, influential teachers
Whether it's recalling the smell of freshly sharpened pencils, remembering the adrenaline rush associated with the first day of school, or recalling the lessons of a great teacher, some memories of elementary school stay for years.
Those memories may be cherished even more for those who become elementary school principals.
With most school districts beginning the new school year this next week, several principals recall their own memories as young students.
Jeff Mathieson, who has been principal at Emily Brittain Elementary for five years, went to Mercer Elementary in the Mercer School District, Mercer County, in the early 1980s.Before school schedules were mailed to students or put online, they were taped on the window of the elementary school a week or so before school started. That is a back-to-school memory that Mathieson remembers vividly.“We couldn't just walk in or anything, but on the front window of the entrance, the class lists for the coming year were posted. And so I can always remember that being a big deal.“It would be advertised in the newspaper, and it seemed like the whole community was waiting for that final word that we could go check out who our classroom teacher was, and it seemed like everybody was there,” he said.“You'd be reading through the list to find your name, and wondering if you got that teacher that you really wanted, wondering if your friends were going to be in your class with you.”And at Mercer, at least back then, students from kindergarten through 12th grade rode the same bus. Mathieson admitted he clung a bit to his older sister, Beth, during those earlier years.“As a kindergartener getting on and seeing these 18-year-olds, who, to a 5-year-old, look like they're probably 30, it was always nice to know that big sis was there,” Mathieson said. “I don't remember ever sitting in the same seat as her, but she was kind of a security blanket for a few years, until I was more comfortable.”An educational career apparently is in his blood: His mother, Sue, was a teacher in a neighboring school district, and now Beth is a music teacher at the same elementary school they both attended.
Meanwhile, Richard Cavett, who's starting his third year as principal at South Butler Intermediate Elementary School, attended Myrtle Avenue Elementary in the Keystone Oaks School District in Allegheny County.He walked back and forth from school each day as long as the weather was good.“It's amazing the things that you did back then that you wouldn't even think about today. It was probably a 30-minute walk. It was like a mile, but there was a shortcut through the woods and a golf course,” Cavett said.“But then when the weather was bad, then we'd car pool with people in our neighborhood.”The price of a school lunch is still etched in his memory. Back in the 1970s, lunches were 45 cents.“The reason I remember that is a lot of my friends would get two quarters. Their parents would just give them two quarters. And they'd pay 45 cents for their lunch,” he said.“And then they would have a nickel leftover where they could buy a cookie. Well, we were probably a low-, middle-class income family. So my mom would give us a quarter and two dimes.”He maybe had fewer cookies than his friends, but looking back now, he respects his parents' budgetary will power.“Every nickel and every dime was just part of the budget,” Cavett said.
<br />And Mandy Toy, who recently was promoted from assistant principal to principal at Haine Elementary School in the Seneca Valley School District, still has a soft spot for children's poet Shel Silverstein.In the early 1990s, as a fifth grader at Benjamin Franklin Elementary School in Bethel Park School District, Allegheny County, she remembered her teacher Mr. Mash always reading Silverstein poems when there was a free moment. She couldn't recall his first name.“He really would act them out, or become the character, while he was reading, with his voice. So just making that literature come alive is just something that's always stuck with me,” she said.“And I look across my office and see two Shel Silverstein books sitting on my bookcase, (with Mr. Mash) probably not even realizing the influence he had.”Years after having him in class, Toy ran into her former teacher at a park during a college break, when she was studying education.“We ended up playing sand volleyball … competing against him. It was very nostalgic, taking me back to fifth grade again,” she said.“I think back to (his teaching methods) and really, I think that's when I try to interact with kids, you want your personality to shine through. You want to give them something to connect to.“And I really feel like he got to the heart of us. He knew learning had to be lighthearted and come alive for us to really be engaged in it.”Mathieson also had a teacher that he'll always remember. His fifth grade science teacher, Mr. Claypoole. He even recently cited a lesson to his wife that he learned back in fifth grade: That light is faster than sound.“We stood on opposite ends of the playground. There was another fifth grade science class. … They took our classes outside and stood on opposite ends with a base drum. And they took turns,” he said.“One would stand at the other end, and you would see his hand in the air, and he would swing the mallet down and strike the base drum, and then quickly swing his hand back up. And you saw his hand go down and up, and then you heard the sound.“Now, you could easily just stand in class and say light travels faster than sound, so you're going to see something before you hear it. And for a few, that's going to register, but for a lot of us, that's not going to make any sense at all. But then we stood out there and watched it, and heard it, and experienced it.”In the end, Toy said that even decades after having some of her most memorable teachers, she still tries to emulate their teaching methods.“Getting to the heart of the kids is my biggest thing, and that's what I try to show my staff,” she said. “If you can't understand where the kids are coming from, then you can't teach them.”
