Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, May 2, 1990 TAG: 9005020477
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: ROBERTA GREEN SPECIAL TO THE ROANOKE TIMES & WORLD-NEWS
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG LENGTH: Long
"I have taught every ability level and every grade level, eighth through 11th," says Carr as she describes her experiences as an English teacher. "I've seen some excellent thinkers and writers.
"And one thing about teaching is that there are not many dull moments."
Born and raised in Kentucky, Carr came to teaching for two reasons and to Blacksburg for one - her husband's new job at Virginia Tech.
"I grew up in a schoolteacher family: my mother, my father [a retired school superintendent], both of my sisters, my brother . . . about 25 total. Even my son and daughter taught for a short time. However, I'm the only English teacher. The rest taught math, home economics, agriculture, that type of thing."
There was another reason why Carr and many bright women of her generation became teachers.
"When I was coming through school, the choice for women was teacher or secretary. That's just the way it was, and I didn't aspire to be a secretary. At first when we came to Blacksburg, I thought we'd made the wrong decision - my husband had had a choice of places to go - but now I know it was the wisest decision we made. It's a wonderful place for rearing children."
Carr's children, a son, Ron, and a daughter, Beth Oliver, attended Blacksburg High School - but not their mother's classes. The two still had the interesting experience of having a mother on the faculty.
"It had its good and bad points," said Ron Carr, now assistant basketball coach at Tech. "It was nice to have someone there if I needed money or to borrow the car or to talk over problems, but if I got into any trouble, she sure found out in a hurry."
Carr also remembers his buddies giving him a bad time about how challenging a teacher his mother was and still is.
"She's hard, and my friends didn't appreciate that much, at least while they were there," he said. "But when they came back after they'd gone to college, they were glad they'd had her, that she'd prepared them so well."
And many students do return to see Carr, to tell her about their lives, to thank her for her help and wisdom.
"There's satisfaction in knowing that you've really helped someone. One of the pluses is that graduates come back and see me, or I read about or hear about them being successful."
Recently, Carr received a letter from a past student who is now enrolled at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton business school, talking about how he uses much of what she taught him years ago. Also, a student who went off to Yale returned at spring break to tell Carr he was using the writing techniques she had taught him.
"That's a reward in itself."
"Mrs. Carr's certainly a good teacher. She is a very demanding teacher with very high expectations for students and herself," said Clinton LeGette, principal of Blacksburg High. "She has been and is a great asset to our faculty."
Carr is demanding, but she works hard to get the students to want to learn.
"One of the most difficult problems is to motivate them. Once they develop an idea and can control their writing, then they can branch out. That's perhaps what they're using and needing in college. And all good expository writing is creative. . . .
"We have always had good students, but I think the commitment to education has waned, or maybe I've just mellowed. Many students now will come to class unprepared; they don't take the responsibility they used to for their own education. Part of it may be that there are more opportunities for extracurricular activies. For instance, sports opportunities have tripled. They are just very, very involved.
Other things have changed, too. "I was the person who first taught `A Raisin in the Sun,' and the parents at the time were ready to take it to the Supreme Court to get that book out of the classroom due to the curse words in the text. It was very, very traumatic, but we have continued to teach that since that time.
Soon Carr is considering retiring, although she still enjoys the classroom. "I spend so many hours grading papers, every evening, all weekend. It would be nice to have time to relax a little bit, to spend more time on other things. I'd like to participate a bit more in the organizations I belong to - the extension homemakers' group, Ruritan Club, the Blacksburg Christian Church. It wouldn't have been possible to accomplish all this without my patient and supportive husband, but sometimes I feel that if my own children were to remember me, it would be with a red pen in my hand."
"When we were all at home," Ron Carr said, "we'd tease her that if any of us wrote anything - a letter or a report or anything - she'd red-mark it. We got a kick out of kidding her, but she is very good at what she does."
"Thirty years," said Jane Carr, "of grading papers is going to be about enough."
by CNB