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A lifetime in education
The student crying in the next room briefly caught Jackie Harper's attention. She stopped her routine for a moment to listen before realizing the crying was nothing to worry over.
She didn't need to step away from her desk to check on things herself or even look through the window of her office to verify her suspicions. The principal at East Elementary School knew how to sort out children's behavior and when to be concerned. It comes with her 28 years of experience as an educator. For Harper, it's become a nearly instinctive reaction.
"There's a tone when it's a problem," she said.
Grabbing a tissue from her desk, Harper dabbed away a few tears welling in the corners of her eyes. Only days away from her last time as an educator, incidents like this have become bittersweet moments in a profession spanning nearly 30 years -- a career that happened nearly by chance.
Majoring in Spanish in college, Harper became a mom shortly afterward and wasn't ready to jump into a full-time job at that point. She opted for a part-time health department job that needed her Spanish-speaking abilities.
When her family moved to Mountain Home in 1976, she went back to college and picked up her elementary education certification in hopes of using her language skills in the district. That opportunity presented itself when the school district hired her as a migrant resource teacher at the junior high school and then at the high school.
For the next couple of years, she taught children from predominantly Spanish-speaking families how to master the complexities of the English language.
Despite her enjoyment of teaching these courses, she felt something was missing. She wanted her own classroom.
That opportunity presented itself when a first-grade teaching position opened up at the grade school at Mountain Home Air Force Base. It was a humbling, sometimes intimidating experience.
"That was the longest two years of my life," she said. "First grade is difficult. They are just so full of energy... but you're totally starting from scratch with some of them, and there are just so many things they have to learn."
After that introduction into teaching, she moved up to teach fourth and sixth graders. A few years later, Harper moved to the base's former junior high school to teach language arts to seventh and eighth graders.
Spending time in so many classrooms over these years, one thing remained constant: Teaching presented its own unique challenges regardless of which grade level she taught.
"Kids are kids... and each grade has it's unique challenges," she said. First graders are eager to please and will do whatever they can to please their teachers. By the sixth grade, they're a bit more skeptical and need more motivation to keep them learning.
By the time these youngsters reach junior high school, they're capable of achieving even more amazing projects, she added.
Harper remembers one junior high student that wrote an essay based on a photo from a children's book regarding frogs in a pond.
That young girl wrote the story from the frogs' point of view and their efforts to convince people to stop polluting their pond.
"It brought a tear from my eye. It was very well done yet very simple and really got the message across," she said.
After the base junior high school was redesignated a middle school, she took a break from being a teacher. Moving back into Mountain Home, she accepted a job as the librarian at East Elementary School.
"That's the best job ever," she said. "Kids want to come to the library. They don't want to get into trouble and don't want to be sent back to class. So behavior issues there are nil."
Being a librarian had other unique aspects. There's nothing more fun and rewarding that taking a child who dislikes reading and hates books even more and find something that piques their interest and renews their interest.
"That's the best thing ever," she said.
Her job at East eventually led Harper into the school's senior post. When the school's vice principal job opened up, she applied for the position and was accepted a short time later. After three years as the school's second in command, she took another step up as its principal.
"I was ready at that point to be in charge. I wanted to have my own building," she said.
The move proved to be another humbling experience, she said.
"When I was in a classroom, I thought that I knew everything there was to know on how a school should be run," she said. "I had some strong opinions on that. But when I got to be the one that actually ran things, I learned that I didn't know as much as I thought I did."
Reaching for her box of tissues while trying hard to avoid tears, Harper admits she'll miss the children the most when she steps down as principal.
"That's going to be hard to take because I'm used to having kids run up and give me hug," she said. "I gather a lot of hugs during the day, and I'm going to miss that."
She's also going to miss the family atmosphere that people associate with East Elementary School.
"East has a good reputation," she said. "It's a fabulous building. Parents will come in and say they can really tell the difference. It's very kid-oriented. The staff here is very dedicated to helping each other out. I've had the opportunity to work with some really outstanding professionals.
"The financial rewards of teaching are not always that great, but there are some other rewards that you can't measure in your checkbook. The one thing that remains the same is there will always be kids that need what we have to offer. It doesn't change. It hasn't changed in the past 28 years and won't change in the next 28 years."
It's really worth it, she said.