End of a 29-year teaching career

In today’s Frontiersman, you may have read a story about Darlene Zehm, a 34-year teacher who spent the last 29 years molding young minds at Swanson Elementary School in Palmer.

It’s not the first time our readers have been introduced to Zehm. Twice you chose her as the Valley’s top teacher in our annual Best of the Valley voting, and this past April we reported on her success after a heart attack prompted her to lose 200 pounds.

Today, Zehm has a different story to tell, about how her nearly three decades of teaching at Swanson came to an end. After being placed on paid administrative leave since the beginning of the school year, Zehm officially retired Oct. 3.

On the surface, that’s not amazingly newsworthy. Longtime teachers retire every year and a new crop of eager, young teachers enter the workforce. That’s the circle of life for educators. What prompted Zehm to contact us was what led up to her decision to call it a career.

With her classroom already set up to teach second grade — which, over the course of a school year, includes using about $40,000 worth of second-grade-oriented materials she’s purchased with her own money over the decades — Zehm was picked by her principal to teach first grade. Although she expressed a wish to remain with second grade and had seniority in the building, hers was the name chosen out of the bowl.

That’s right — the assignment was made by drawing names from a bowl.

It’s a move Zehm considers unprofessional and disrespectful to her tenure at the school. We agree, to a point.

The numbers don’t lie. With more first-graders at the school this year, Swanson needs more resources at that level.

Zehm’s a teacher at the school, and it’s the principal’s job to assign teachers to classrooms. Whether she likes the assignment or not, if Zehm wanted to teach her 30th at the school, first grade was it.

Superintendent Deena Paramo spent 15 years as a principal and said, from what she understands, first grade is a good place for Zehm considering her track record of producing the highest reading scores at the school.

“Knowing that reading is more important early — as soon as first grade starts — I want that teacher there, and I bet she has that to offer,” Paramo said. “I would put my best reading teachers where they’re needed most, and that’s at first grade.”

That’s a reasonable point, one that may have been missed in communicating with Zehm. While we believe Zehm has a legitimate gripe about how the decision to reassign her was made, it’s reasonable to believe she also would have been a wonderful first-grade teacher. It’s sad the school couldn’t find a way to keep a seasoned, veteran teacher with a track record of educational excellence. Whether Zehm’s teaching first grade or second grade, Swanson and the Valley are better off having her in the classroom.

It’s a shame another class of Swanson youngsters won’t find that out.