Generations of teaching

WASILLA — Mary and Wenter Harvey have answered many callings over the past 65 years.

They were called to pioneer the first church in Wasilla and in 1945 built Cottonwood Christian Camp on Knik Road. In the 1960s, they were called to Oregon, where Mary continued a career in teaching she began in the Mat-Su.

Now 88, Mary Harvey taught in Canyonville, Ore., until her retirement five years ago and was beaming on Monday to meet and catch up with many old friends at a reception in her honor at the Old Wasilla town site. Wenter passed away in January.

For Mavis Line, seeing Mary after many decades was a moving experience.

“You don’t remember me, do you?” Line asked. “Think of a cold winter day.”

“Oh yes,” Mary recalled. “You came to the house when you first got here (to Alaska) and said, ‘I want you to show me how to make a big fire in a wood stove and to bake pies.’”

“Yes,” Line said. “And you showed me how and I put my pie in the oven and in just a little bit it was black.”

The one-room church where she taught Sunday School and vacation Bible school is much the same, Mary said.

She admits that even after nearly 40 years in the classroom, “I’m having a hard time retiring.”

The Frontiersman caught up with Mary Harvey at her reception and discussed how education has changed over the decades.

Frontiersman: Tell us a little about how you got into teaching.

Harvey: When we first came I worked for quite awhile just being an aide. The bosses said I had to take more schooling to do the teaching. So, I went to Anchorage and did what they said I had to have. Then I did teach in Wasilla for about a year and a half, then they sent me off to Willow. I had to take two buses to get out there. … I remember the teacher they had there left at Christmas time and didn’t come back, and they weren’t too happy about that. So they had three substitutes, and not a one of them would go back to that class. I was with that class in February and I stayed until the end of the school year.

F: What memories does it bring back being in this building again?

H: Oh, so many of them. I can remember many things we did here. I’ll never forget the time when I was teaching in the school here that parents came right at the end of school and we knew that the father was quite a drunkard. The mother was working, so anyhow, they were there right at the end of school. As soon as I (had) the children on the bus, the man said to me, “What did you do to my son?” I thought, is that good or is that bad that he’s talking to me like that? I said, “Well, I knew he could do better in his work, so I drew a totem pole and put (lines) at 10, 20, 30, 40 — clear up to 100.” And I said to him the next day to mark (his grade). He had made 30 on his arithmetic. I said, “I bet tomorrow you can do 60.” “You think so?” “Why I know you can,” I said. From that day forward, that boy averaged in all of his classes 96. He needed someone to think he could do something.

F: Over your years of teaching, how have children changed?

H: Well, it’s a big change. You find that today you need to help more than we did back then, because a lot of them when they first come to school they just don’t know really how to act. They start fighting with each other. I had a lot of things I did that kind of calmed everybody down. If I saw there was trouble in the home, I paid extra attention to that child.

F: Are children today harder to teach than a generation or two ago?

H: I would say so, because today they really think they’re the boss and do what they want to do. This one boy, when I took that school in Willow, he was — well, I don’t want to say he was my worst person there. He came to school crying every morning. I knew something was wrong. One day we had to take a state test, and one of the questions was “who would you invite to your birthday party?” And he wrote, “I wouldn’t invite anybody because everyone hates me.” That gave me a clue that he needed more help. I asked the children (on a day the boy was absent) that when he comes back tomorrow … to ask him to play on the teeter-totter or something. From that day, that child just changed.

F: How does it make you feel when you meet former students who are successful in their personal and professional lives?

H: I feel like maybe I did the right thing.

F: Does this one-room church seem smaller than it did before you left?

H: Oh yes. I wish (Wenter) could’ve come with us. He would’ve enjoyed it so, but he died Jan. 6 of this year. This church is about the same. They’ve painted it a few times. It’s very similar, but I can remember pumping that organ. We have so many precious memories of all of our children here.

F: Are there more problems facing students today?

H: That may be. I think children now are probably not as patient as they should be. The TV, I think that takes a lot away from what they should be studying.

F: Do children read enough?

H: Oh, did I teach reading. I was going to make sure these kids can read. My principal would say, “Mary, you drive these kids so hard you think they don’t know anything if you don’t have them ready for third grade by the time they’re finished with first grade.”

F: What’s one thing we could change in education today that would help students the most?

H: Well, I would suggest that a teacher would try to get books that are on their level to start, then give them things to increase their words and their knowledge. If they don’t get to read by the time they go to the second grade, they’re going to have 11 years they’re going to have trouble.

F: What have you missed most being away from Alaska?

H: Oh, I miss the snow in the wintertime, and of course, I miss all of my dear children. At that time, they were in grade school and my husband and I built a summer camp. Every summer we had three different groups that would come to the camp. I miss the camp with the kids.

F: What role should parents play in education?

H: I think the parents today, with them both working, the children don’t get too much help. I did everything I could think of was to just do, as my husband used to say, work them to death and they don’t even know it.