Class Act - Ethel Moses

January 13, 2004
Reported by Pam Dixon

Each month KPLC honors and educator who goes over and above the call of duty. This month's Class Act Award goes to Ethel Moses a kindergarten teacher at South Beauregard Elementary School in Longville.

Moses has been teaching for 40 years, 34 at the same school, and she's impacted two generations of students.

Moses was only 21 years old when she started teaching home economics at Hyatt high school, 40 miles from her home. She was only a couple of years older than her students. Moses says, "Just the fact that I was a new teacher was frightening in itself."

That was 40 years ago. Today Moses is a kindergarten teacher at South Beauregard Elementary. Moses says, "I enjoy this age child. You can fuss at them and get on them and five minutes later they're hugging your neck and telling you that they love you and you're pretty."

Moses has been a kindergarten teacher at South Beauregard since 1970, just two years after the school added kindergarten. Moses says, "At that time kindergarten was considered to be mostly social development and now they're learning to read in kindergarten."

One of Moses' former kindergarten students, Virginia DuBose, is now teaching kindergartners in the next room. DuBose says, "She is a wonderful, kind, quiet teacher who gets her point across without yelling." Another former student Zach Jones is now an English teacher at South Beauregard High next door. Jones says, "She's probably a big part of the reason why I'm a teacher today because of the fact that she taught me a love of letters and reading. Just somehow she made it click for me." And as long as this Class Act still has the energy to keep up with her kindergarteners retirement will have to wait.

If you would like to nominate someone for the Class Act Award, send the nominee's name, information about the person's teaching background, community service, special projects, etc, and 2-3 letters of reference to Pam Dixon.