Be True To Your School

To celebrate our 30th wedding anniversary, my wife and I took a trip with our children and some of our friends to the Grand Tetons and Yellowstone.  Our first stop, however, was in Kansas City, Missouri, and while we did take in a Royals baseball game, the real purpose was to visit the first school where my wife and I taught.

In 1991 it was the Martin Luther King, Jr. Latin Grammar Magnet Middle School, and although it closed in 2009, the building still stands at 4301 Indiana.  If the name of the schools seems a bit long, that is because it was changed when the school was restructured as a magnet school as part of the city's desegregation in the 1980s.  An article in 2020 describes the long history of school segregation in Kansas City, and the following paragraph details the environment that would become the first teaching experience for my wife and me.

The hope in the 1980s was to build one of the best school districts in the nation.  Fifteen brand-new buildings were constructed while 54 old ones were remodeled.  They created nearly five dozen magnet schools which concentrated on subjects such as computer science, foreign languages, and classical Greek athletics.  James Shortridge explains, "If the quality of instruction was high, the buildings modern, and the programs innovative, students from all over the region would want to attend."

It was sad to see the front doors closed, and I could still remember walking through them to interview with Mrs. Juanita Hempstead, the principal.  I learned so much as an educator in the two years we spent at King from Latin teachers like Leo Kerwin, Joe Gehrer, and Donna Jacobson, math teacher Phyllis Kopp, social studies teacher Richard Cayce, English teacher Winston Valin, and many others*, yet, as it remained for the next thirty years of my career, it was the students who made the difference.

I wish I had kept records from those days of all my eighth grade Latin students.  Many names linger in my mind along with many more faces.  Included among them are Torium Johnson, Anneatricia Hicks, Nicholas Brager, Fanetta Williams, Sheena Clay, Bennie Terrell, Anthony Merritt, Hollywood Austin, Azure'd Canty, William Workcuff, Antwan Lytle, James King, Randon Jones, Simone Kirkwood, Anissa Tiger, Donte Bonds, Alexis Cadenhead, and Maurice Booker.

The picture above is from the back of the school where we parked each day in our black Geo Storm.  I remember my eyes filling with hot tears as we walked out the doors behind us for the last time in 1993 as prepared to move to Texas for me to attend graduate school.  I loved the students of King Middle School, and although I was a raw teacher fresh from college, I wanted to give them all I had.  In fact, I remember administering a state-mandated exam during the spring of our first year, and as the students worked on it, I walked around the room and started considering what I would do differently and what I would retain the following year.  That practice of reflection and the striving to do better has remained with me for thirty years, and I trace its origins to my time at King.

What a thrill it was for my wife and me to return and to show our children and our friends where we started.  King Middle will always hold a special place in my heart.

*The colleagues whose names I can remember.

Latin

Carla Brown

Donna Jacobson

Joe Gehrer

Leo Kerwin

Peter Dodington

Math

Phyllis Kopp

Rev. Buie

Science

Barbara Webb

Franz Nelson

Mrs. Shurn

Larry Grinstead

Social Studies

Ruth Whertvine

Richard Cayce

Ransom Ward

English

Winston Valin, III

Mrs. Wheeler

Arlene Penner

Sandy Clifton

Special Ed

Dr. Rozelle Boyd

Principal

Juanita Hempstead

Assistant Principals

Lonnie Jackson

Ulrica Seals

Mike Schepis