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Graduates Ready To Inspire

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By TOM JACKSON

The Tampa Tribune

Published: June 8, 2008

LAND O' LAKES - Success is much on our minds these days, the idea of it coming with the rites of graduation. Yet defining success may be no less complicated, or prone to dispute, as its achievement.

Acknowledgement of this fundamental life condition emerges slowly, like a butterfly from its chrysalis. The revelation is best demonstrated at, of all places, 10- and 20-year high school reunions. The first retains, along with its fierce sense of traditional territoriality, a ritual sniffing of the air for scents of those who have "made it." Ten years later, classmates who eyed each other like wary caste-system survivors at their last meeting often have shed the last of their youthful limitations, suspicions and prejudices; all have taken wing, even if those wings have different shapes and colors.

Which is to say: More than most, Ashley Duvall, Sarah Saavedra, Michelle Hensley and Tiffany Conley, all 18 and all distinguished members of the countywide high school Class of 2008, are graduating 20-year-high-school-reunion-ready, their shared sense of what makes a successful life developed remarkably beyond their years.

Late in April, at the annual excellence-in-academics ceremony partly sponsored by The Pasco Tribune, Duvall, Saavedra, Hensley and Conley had their moments on the Wesley Chapel performing arts center stage, each a winner of scholarships resulting from years of academic excellence.

The Audacity Of Alternate Paths

Their academic and extracurricular achievements suggest (as some have said to their faces) they could do capital-A Anything. Yet among the parade of aspiring physicians, lawyers, politicians, engineers, pathologists, astronauts, Broadway actors and the odd primatologist or ambassador, these four stood out.

They can do Anything.

They chose to become teachers. Note the exclusion of the anticipated antecedent, "And yet." The omission is purposeful.

"Teachers make a huge difference in the world," says Saavedra, a Land O' Lakes High pole-vaulter, golfer, soccer team captain, yearbook editor and erstwhile aspiring zoologist who finally succumbed to the song of the classroom when she admitted her addiction to designing - omigosh - lesson plans. "Weird, huh? But I love it."

Adds Conley, Mitchell High's answer to Penny Marshall, where else can you get a reliable paycheck for what amounts to performing improv five days a week for a captive audience? Consider, she says, Jean Imperatore, the algebra teacher with a secret identity - Madame Numbers - who imparted the wisdom of balanced equations by doing "crazy, goofy things. She was soooo cool."

What's Not To Like?

These four, these scholars, honor-roll fixtures, National Honor Society inductees, athletes, Sunday school teachers and thespians put the lie to conventional wisdom that says colleges of education are where underachievers go to secure their place among the underpaid and underappreciated.

It turns out there are places in those colleges for overachievers, too. As for the rest, it depends - with all due respect to United School Employees of Pasco chief Lynne Webb - on your definition of low pay and slender acknowledgement.

For her part, Conley finds much of a teacher's lifestyle downright alluring: seven-hour workdays, weekends off, lengthy summer vacations, Christmas break.

"You're home when your kids are home," she says.

From experience, Saavedra observes that rumors of public teacher poverty may be overblown. Kimberly and Orlando Saavedra reared three college-educated or -bound children on their earnings as instructors at Land O' Lakes High and Marchman Tech.

Besides, says Zephyrhills High's Hensley, would-be teachers know what they're getting into. This accounts for much of her resistance to the first tugs of the classroom, discovered as a spellbinding day care center associate.

Regarding her colleagues' observations that to teaching she seemed natural born, her response was succinct: "Shut up."

But destiny is a harsh master. Drafted as an emergency substitute for a Mulberry Church of God Sunday school class full of 'tweeners, Hensley snuggled in like a cog to a gear. Recreating the fabled handoff from Wally Pipp to Lou Gehrig, the previous instructor did not return and Hensley never looked back; the teachers' hall of fame is duly advised to be on the lookout.

Abundant, Precious, Necessary

Ashley Duvall, who devoured volunteer hours at Calusa Elementary and Marchman as if they were lunchroom mac-and-cheese, confesses a similar sense of the Almighty at work. When guiding little ones - Duvall aims for a career in kindergarten - satisfies cerebrally and spiritually, it's God in the lead, she says. When that happens, "You're not looking at the money."

Each of the four aims to replicate, then enhance, the skills of those who inspired them, those who were tough but fair.

Teachers such as Land O' Lakes' Michael Maynard who, says Saavedra, "turned kids' worlds upside down." Such as Daniel Vanno, who, on Conley's essays alone, found a way to dispense his annual quota of D's without ever letting her become discouraged.

Teachers such as these are not so rare as the current conversation about public school education would suggest; nonetheless, they are as precious as gemstones. When, presumably, Duvall, Conley, Saavedra and Hensley add their unique can-do sparkle to America's academic treasure, success will be shaped, polished and defined anew.

It has been said of these classroom leaders of tomorrow that they can do Anything. They know that; and while there is nothing wrong with wanting to become doctors, lawyers, engineers, Broadway stars, primatologists or ambassadors, if some of the really bright kids don't return to command classrooms, who's going to give the "You can do Anything" speech to the next generation?

Tom Jackson can be reached at (813) 948-4219.

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