"A Career in Special Education"

A teacher recalls being hired during the early rollout of federal special education law, insisting from the start on advocating openly for students’ needs, and later teaching through school consolidation from Tidewater to Kimball Elementary over a 39-year career.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:07

So then you started at uh Tidewater Elementary School. So walk us through that.

SPEAKER_01 0:13

Well, uh what happened was I I actually when we left Mor when we were more leaving Morgantown to move to Welch, my husband was coming down to work in uh with Lawyer Cunningham and at the prosecutor's office. And uh the the Board of Education had been had a lawsuit for a special education case, and they needed to have somebody that was certified in special education, and and special education at that time was brand new. It was new because the federal law of 94142 was a new law that said that all children had to be educated, which included the special needs kids. And I had a degree in special ed that encompassed all of everything that was qualified to teach special ed because there were different segments of it. There was physically handicapped, they had the mentally impaired of different sizes and segments, and I had certifications in all areas. So um I was asked to come to the Board of Education to speak with the superintendent of schools, who was John Drosic was the superintendent of schools at that time, about taking the position at Todwater Elementary as the teacher. And um uh I went down and talked with him and and uh uh I I asked him a sort of off-track question. I asked him to look at my face and uh he he didn't quite understand and he said, What do you mean? I s I asked him to take a look at my face to see if there was a muffle on my mouth. And uh he said, No, there's no muffle on your mouth, and he was still confused about what I meant. I said, Well, Doctor, Mr. Drosick, if I take this job, I don't want you to expect me to keep my mouth shut on nothing. Because I meant that.

SPEAKER_00 2:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:25

I wanted to have the freedom to say and do all the things that I needed to do to keep myself and the children that I taught safe.

SPEAKER_00 2:34

Yeah.

unknown 2:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:35

And I didn't want to be caught into a situation where the children could be teeth cheated out of anything because I knew that I was getting ready to take on a new task with working with special needs kids. And having the education that I had got from West Virginia University let me know that we really had to be on our P's and Q's to see to it that these children were taken care of because we were parents at Lightham, and we had to be a direct advocate for these children, and I wanted him to understand that by not having a muffle on my mouth, I would be just that.

SPEAKER_00 3:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:16

And uh that's how I got my job at at uh with the McDowell County Board of Education.

SPEAKER_00 3:22

Wow, that's awesome. So how long did you teach then? How many years did you teach in all?

SPEAKER_01 3:28

In altogether, I taught about 39 years. Wow.

SPEAKER_00 3:31

Yeah Wow. So did you stay how long did you stay at Tidewater?

SPEAKER_01 3:35

Did you eventually I stayed at Tidewater about 13 years? It w is it Tidewater was the small, it was the black school in the neighborhood. Kimball Elementary School was downtown Kimball. But they this Board of Education decided to consolidate Tidewater, excuse me, along with Kimball Elementary School, because these federal laws coming along let the boards of education know they could no longer isolate the children that need they needed to be incorporated in the regular school with the regular kids. Wow. And the only way they could do that was be to combine Tidewater and Kimball together. And so they combined Tidewater and Kimball Elementary. Rather than maintaining the name Tidewater, even though the school was placed at the Tidewater site, they decided to make it Kimball Elementary.

SPEAKER_00 4:38

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 4:39

And so I went from Tidewater Elementary to Kimball Elementary and worked there about 18 years old.