Gretchen Sues Retiring After 30-Year Teaching Career

Gretchen Sues sits in a tiny chair in her third-grade classroom at Franklin Elementary School.

For Sues, who retires this year after 30 years, teaching is in her blood.

"My parents were teachers, my grandparents were teachers," she said. "I have four siblings – three of them are teachers. Now we’re on the fourth generation, and my daughter’s a teacher."

Sues taught in Columbus for just three years before having children. After doing so, she gave up teaching for 13 years.

"When my third child went to first grade, I went back to teaching," she said. "I’ve been in Kent for, I think, 22 years."

As a child, Sues would come home from school and teach her own classes. Her friends and siblings served as her students.

"I used to love it when the teachers would give out extra papers. I would take them home and make all my friends do them (or) make my little sister learn them before she was old enough," Sues said. "I played school all the time."

Though enthusiastic, Sues herself did not start out as a good student because of difficulties she had with reading. She had problems tracking with her eyes, and her parents put her in all kinds of programs so that she would track better visually.

"I knew that I had a problem, and my self-esteem was low because of it," Sues said.

In the 1950s, schools could not accommodate students with learning disabilities. They were all just lumped into one big group, Sues said.

"If you were a poor reader, you were put in the buzzard reading group," she said. "The bluebirds flew and the buzzards kind of stayed back."

Her vision problem was not corrected until college, when she got glasses and was taught how to apply the passages she read.

Now, students are recognized as individuals, and teachers understand each learns differently.

Sues spends a lot of time reading aloud to her third-graders.

"By reading to them, it introduces them to good literature, but it also helps them to become good, fluent oral readers," she said.

Also, by hearing her students read, Sues is better able to identify and correct any problems her students might be having.

There are about 200 applicants for Sues’ position at . She says she is sad to go, but she knows it's the right time.

"Things are happening, in education, that it takes a younger person – a fresh person with new ideas," Sues said. "Someone who is technology minded."

With the school’s new smart-boards technology, teachers can create all kinds of interactive online lessons. Teaching this way has been difficult for Sues. She is not patient enough to overcome the guaranteed tech bugs and problems, so she tends to teach traditionally.

She understands the advantages of using technology in her lessons, yet it worries her how much media students consume in their daily lives.

There are consequences that result from an overload of technology, which Sues has noticed over the years can include a lack of problem-solving and communication skills.

"They’re not interacting as much as kids used to," Sues said of her students. "Often times, in their free time, they’re alone."

She sees "people tuning out the world, and tuning into technology" — something even she admits to being guilty of at times.

She has many plans for herself that have nothing to do with technology, such as a side business called RememBearWhen, in her retirement.

"I make teddy bears out of clothing that people give to me," Sues said.

For whatever reason, the clothing she receives is memorable to that individual. For example, the other day she got three sweatshirts from a fourth-grader whose grandfather passed away earlier this year.

"I’ll be making teddy bears for her," she said.

Sues has five grandchildren, ages 7 and younger, who all live near Kent. Her retirment plans include volunteering in their schools. And of course, she’s going to travel with her husband.

"In the fall – I’ve always wanted to go to the Smoky Mountains and see the leaves change," she said, adding, "I want to go back to Italy. Italy is a favorite place of mine."

On June 3, 2011, Sues will see her students leave her classroom for the last time, but she won't be sad.

She looks back on her career with pride, knowing that she touched so many lives, and that so many lives touched her.