Column: A Tribute to a Career of Service to Our Children
Twenty-eight years, 1,500 children ... at least.
By Erin Richardson
This article was republished with permission from FXBG Advance’s news partner InsideNoVa.com. Sign up for InsideNoVa.com’s free email subscription today.
My mom has been a teacher for Prince William County Public Schools for 28 years. She has touched the lives of countless colleagues, students and their families and been an invaluable teacher to the county. Now that she is retiring, I find it only fitting to pay tribute to her decades of dedicated service to this community and particularly to its children.
When you do the math, my mom has influenced the lives of easily over 1,500 children. Don’t believe me? Let me show you my work – after all, my mom is a teacher:
She spent 20 years as a classroom teacher – assume a classroom has 25 students (we all know it’s way more, but that’s another topic). So that’s 500 students.
Plus eight years as a gifted resources teacher – these years she had twice as many students, equaling around 400 (a modest estimate since half those years she was the gifted teacher for two elementary schools and went back-and-forth daily). What’s that? Compensation for gas, you ask? Hahaha… funny.
Plus 28 years of before and after-school duties, including breakfast duty, bus duty and after-school programs including a Scrabble club and a bluebird club – so let’s make another modest estimate of 300 students impacted (that’s just 11 or so a year).
Plus eight years of testing children for the gifted program and conducting push-in lessons in regular classrooms – let’s round that to another 200 students.
Plus years teaching summer school, so let’s make that another 200.
So, we have: 500+400+300+200+200=1,600. Is it an exact number? No. But that’s the point: It’s impossible to say just how many kids my mom influenced during her career, but it’s safe to say it was well over 1,500. I doubt most of us have even spoken to 1,500 kids in our entire lives.
But, wait. I didn’t even explain how she got started teaching. She didn’t go straight into it after college. She waited until she had two small children and then put herself through graduate school at night to earn her master’s degree in education. It was during these nights that Dad was in charge of dinner – which meant an exciting trip to the salad bar at Giant.
Then my mom got her first job – teaching second grade at Vaughan Elementary. I remember helping her set up her classroom. She had a huge library of books for her students and I put a stamp inside each one: “Property of Kathy Richardson.” My mom loves reading and always shared that love with her students. Her classroom always had bookcases filled with books she bought for her students, and they were always welcomed and encouraged to check one out.
My mom then helped open Penn Elementary – no easy feat, just ask any teacher who’s done it. And after several years she had the opportunity to teach at her dream school: Springwoods Elementary (her commute: five minutes).
I think if you ask my mom what the highlight of her career was, she’ll say working at Springwoods, when she was a fifth grade teacher.
She was integral to the school earning multiple Prince William County School of Excellence awards, and her principal nicknamed the fifth grade team the “dream team” because they were such a strong group of teachers. In all her years there, my mom never had a single child fail their SOL. Yeah; she’s that good.
My mom spent her final years teaching at McAuliffe Elementary, a Title 1 school. So, when she wanted to enroll the school in an educational program offered by the Virginia Bluebird Society, there simply was no money to pay for it – not even to install a birdhouse with a video camera (the broken financial system of our public schools is shameful – but also another topic for another day).
Now, my mom does not take no for an answer. So, she researched grants, applied and got funding for the entire program. She then set up an after-school Bluebird Club for students to conduct research on the nests and provide data to the bluebird society.
She wasn’t paid for the extra time spent teaching after school, but that’s not why she did it. Just as it wasn’t why she started an after-school Scrabble Club while teaching sixth grade English at Benton Middle. She did it because she wanted to provide opportunities for kids – fun opportunities for learning.
Most kids didn’t even know anything about the club’s subject when joining – a testament to just how much they loved learning from her, because you don’t stay after school to learn about something you may not even like if you don’t at least like the teacher.
My mom made so many contributions throughout her career. She mentored new teachers, spoke out at School Board meetings, and went to bat countless times for kids who often had no one else in their corner. And I think that is the cornerstone of my mom’s work as a teacher: No matter the consequences, no matter how unpopular her view was, she always used her voice as an advocate for what was best for the students.
I’m incredibly proud to be her daughter. And wish so badly I could give her the recognition she earned and deserves. But what would that even look like? An arena filled with past students, colleagues and their families, all sharing stories of how she influenced their lives? And then the superintendent gives her the “key to PWCS” as a small token of appreciation, along with $1 million to signify their gratitude for the hours upon hours of unpaid work she did and supplies she bought with her own money, while knowing she would never be reimbursed and simultaneously being sidelined by the very School Board who was more concerned with their own political agendas than doing what was best for their teachers and students? … Yeah, I think that would be a nice start.
But for now, I will have to stick with using the instrument my mom taught me to use fearlessly and frequently by her own example – my voice. So, ahem…
Congratulations to my mom, Kathy Creech. I know no one more deserving of retirement and of the title, World’s Best Teacher.
Erin Richardson is an actor, singer and comedian who splits her time between Lake Ridge and New York City.
Support the Advance with an Annual Subscription or Make a One-time Donation
The Advance has developed a reputation for fearless journalism. Our team delivers well-researched local stories, detailed analysis of the events that are shaping our region, and a forum for robust, informed discussion about current issues.
We need your help to do this work, and there are two ways you can support this work.
Sign up for annual, renewable subscription.
Make a one-time donation of any amount.
Local Obituaries
To view local obituaries or to send a note to family and loved ones, please visit the link that follows.
This article is published under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND. It can be distributed for noncommercial purposes and must include the following: “Published with permission by FXBG Advance.”
What a lovely tribute.