‘It’s hard to leave them’

The world was different when Nancy Gilson first began teaching.

When she started teaching elementary school students in Sunnyside in 1973, the news focused on President Richard Nixon’s secret tape recordings of Oval Office conversations. Tony Orlando and Dawn were on the radio singing about yellow ribbons and oak trees, “The Exorcist” was scaring people witless in theaters and “The Young and the Restless” made its daytime television debut.

Spain’s Francisco Franco was still alive and the first episode of “Saturday Night Live” was still two years away. By the time Gilson started teaching in the East Valley School District in 1976, the Chevy Chase punch line “Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead” was a national punch line.

“It was a different time, that’s for sure,” said Gilson, who retires after 35 years in classrooms, more than 25 of them at Trent Elementary. “Kids were totally different and I think parents were much more involved than they are now – they were much more hands-on then than they are now. It’s a busier world now, and school isn’t quite the priority it was then.”

Those were the days, it should be noted, before home computers and video games arrived to shorten attention spans.

“You have to be much more entertaining now than we were then,” Gilson laughed. “But, you know, kids are still kids. It’s fun to teach them and fun to see those bright little faces whenever they learn something new. There’s never a dull moment, that’s for sure.”

The job may have changed, she says, but the passion always has been there. It was there when she started out in Sunnyside and again when she started in the East Valley School District three years later. Since 1982 she’s been at Trent Elementary.

“It’s a hard job, but it’s been so rewarding,” she said. “I love it here. The kids all want to be in school – they don’t like it when vacations come around. They love to learn. They know we care about them. We have a really strong staff here at Trent that works very well together and cares a lot about these kids. I have kids of kids I’ve had before.

“I’m going to keep on as a sub – just here at Trent Elementary. I still want to keep my hand in things next year.”

Gilson is not prepared to leave completely, she admitted. Teaching the children of your own former students can do that to a teacher.

“It’s so nice when you have former students steering their children into your classroom because they have fond memories and were successful there,” she said. “That gives you such a nice feeling.”

Such feelings are the constant in an ever-changing world.

“That’s what I love about teaching third-graders,” she said. “They are so expressive, especially in their enthusiasm. When they learn something new, it’s written all over their face and they get so excited. I do love that. I think that’s what gives me the most satisfaction.”

As the world has changed, the teaching profession has moved to keep up, Gilson said.

“We use technology quite a bit,” she said. “And I think everything is farther along. What we used to teach in third grade, they teach in second grade now. Things have moved ahead, too, in terms of kids’ knowledge base because of the technology.”

Even with all the technology, Gilson said, she’s always enjoyed taking time out to read to her classroom.

“I still read to them every day,” she said. “I just think that it’s important. So many kids these days don’t get read to at home, so I try to read to them for at least 15 or 20 minutes. I try to make it a calming-down period at the end of the day.”

Along with advancement, she says, there has been a trade off. Where teachers once were able to set a pace dictated by how quickly each class learned before, today’s teachers have no such luxury.

“I think it’s a much harder job than it used to be,” she said. “There’s just so much pressure – you have to do this and you have to do that. Before, we taught at the pace the kids could handle. Now you have to rush to get through a set program because you have to get from point A to point B in a certain amount of time. You have a whole list of demands at both the state and federal level with testing. We’re performance based, that’s for sure.”

Even individual lessons come prepackaged.

“All the programs we get now are all so scripted – we don’t have all the free teaching we did back then. We get a math series in now and it’s all set up for us. There’s not enough time in the day to get everything in and, in a lot of ways, technology has taken away a lot of the fun things we used to do. We used to have more time for things like field trips and art projects.”

Gilson’s advice to young teachers starting out is simple.

“Rule No. 1: keep smiling,” she said. “It will be challenging, but it will also be rewarding in the end.

“I don’t envy young teachers starting out because there is so much pressure because of state and federal guidelines and testing. But if they can stick it out and get comfortable with it, it can be so rewarding.”

Gilson said she’s been lucky to have worked at Trent.

“I think that teaching is the kind of thing where it would be too easy to fail if you didn’t have a great team around you to support you,” she said. “That’s what I love about this school and this group of people. It’s hard to leave them.”