Former school teacher Jacqueline Pfeiffer wears period clothing to give a Titanic talk to third-graders at South Butler Primary School last month. Pfeiffer said her students' fascination with the 1912 sea disaster has caused her to become an informal Titanic expert over the years to keep up with their questions.

There's a lot of lessons to be learned from the Titanic: the arrogance of Man, the randomness of fate and, of course, third-grade mathematics and social studies.

Jacqueline Pfeiffer of Winfield Townhip, used the story of the Titanic and its fatal 1912 maiden voyage to illustrate lessons for 26 years for third-grade students in the Winfield Elementary and then at South Butler Primary School until her retirement in 2007.

And even in retirement, Pfeiffer still visits schools and retirement homes in period-appropriate clothing to give talks on the doomed ocean liner.

Pfeiffer, a member of the South Butler District School Board, visited two third-grade classes at South Butler Primary School, 328 Knoch Road, Saxonburg, just before Christmas.

“Miss Pfeiffer came into our classroom to talk to our students about the Titanic. Over the years, Miss Pfeiffer has collected many leveled readers, books and information about the ship,” said Cary Beale, a third-grade teacher.

“We recently read a story in our new reading series that was about immigrants, so it was super helpful for Miss Pfeiffer to come in and talk about the sinking and raising of the Titanic and all of the facts pertaining to the building of the ship,” said Beale.

“This started long before the movie,” said Pfeiffer of her students' Titanic obsession, which she first noticed in 1992.

“It was a unit in our reading book about the Loch Ness monster and the Titanic.

The Titanic became a favorite topic of her third-graders.

“I think it's because it's their first time getting into the class system: rich versus poor immigrants,” said Pfeiffer. “And they imagine what it's like to be a child that didn't speak the language immigrating here.”

“I had one boy who was pretty much illiterate,” she said. “He loved the Titanic so much he learned to read so he could read the Titanic books. He graduated with honors.”

“The interest has been there for over 100 years,” said Pfeiffer and she said her students' interest in the Titanic could be channeled to illustrate lesson in social sciences, mathematics and history.

She said, “Students coming into the third grade would ask 'When are we going to do the Titanic? When are we going to do the Titanic?' The interest just flowed from one year to another.”

Pfeiffer, to keep up with her students' enthusiasm has done a lot of research and amassed a small library of books on the subject.And since her retirement, she gives talks about the ship, its sinking and the recovery efforts for local groups and at Butler County Community College.“One of my ex-students now teaches at Mars. I do a yearly talk there in the spring,” she said.In December, Pfeiffer came in to talk to Beale's and Brittany Koman's classes at Butler Primary School. She arrived dressed as upper-crust ladies of the day would have dressed.“I made this dress myself. I used patterns from the movie, but I added more fabric,” she said.Speaking of James Cameron's 1997 blockbuster film, Pfeiffer said, “I would never show the movie to my class. It's got some inappropriate scenes.“Of course, they might go over my students' heads. It seems they just wanted to know whether the movie shows the fourth funnel collapsing or not,” she said.Pfeiffer had praise for Cameron's attention to detail.“James Cameron went out of his way to be as historically accurate as possible,” she said. “The one thing was flashlights. Flashlights were not invented until 1913, but Cameron said he had no way to show that Rose (the heroine) survived without them.“Cameron noted in the credits that flashlights were not historically accurate,” Pfeiffer said.It isn't just the young that are drawn to the tragedy at sea.Shirley Fryer, spokeswoman for Concordia Lutheran Ministries, 134 Marwood Road, Jefferson Township, said Pfeiffer's Jan. 9 Titanic talk at facility was very popular drawing 48 attendees.Fryer said, “It was a good crowd for this series of classes. We've attracted a lot of people from the community, too.”Pfeiffer said, “They had a lot of questions. One lady at Concordia said she Googled the Titanic so 'I knew enough about it to ask questions.'”Pfeiffer said people wanting to engage her as a speaker should email pfeifferjc@aol.com.

Third-grader Gia Vresko looked at a copy of the book that Pfeiffer used to support her talk at the South Butler Primary School.