Why Do We Do This Job - Part 2

Kathy Dail, our school nurse, is the only current employee that has been working at Greene Central longer than Dana Hedgepeth. So technically, Ms. Hedgepeth holds the title of the most tenured teacher. The "Queen of Graduation" attended our school as a student and graduated in 1991. She went to Pitt Community College to become a nurse but quickly learned that she didn't see herself doing that. Against the advice of her family, she decided to become a teacher and came right back to Greene Central in her first year. Almost every teacher in the building had taught her and she did not have her own classroom but lived on a cart that roamed from room to room each period. She was quick to tell me that she cried every day in her first year of teaching. 

Twenty-five years later she can't imagine doing a different job. Today many of her students are the children of former students. Those generational relationships have been a key to her success. Ms. Hedgepeth firmly believes that the relationships she built years ago are still paying off for her today. Living, working and raising her two boys in the same school community where she still works has led many of her students to affectionately refer to her as "Ma" instead of Ms. Hedgepeth. As Ma, her students know that she grew up here with many of the same experiences and struggles that our students experience. And even though she is older than their parents, that relatable nature makes it easier to teach. In room 32, students learn life + math and while they get a credit, they also get someone that they can come to later. 

While Ms. Hedgepeth claims that students today are probably better than they were a generation ago, she also knows that her patience is probably a little shorter now too. Now that she can count on one hand her years to retirement, she doesn't want that to spoil her attitude in the time she has left. She works hard to leave her problems at the door each day. Her students don't deserve to deal with her issues on top of what they have going on.

So when I asked her why she does this job, her answer also had little to do with curriculum. She said, "I love the students. I love my department and the people that I work with. I love the relationships. We are a family, good and bad. It's not about the math, but they accept that later."