In May, Marianne Richardson will retire from the special education department at Winslow High School, probably. This is her ninth year of “I am going to retire at the end of the school year,” but you can still find her in her cubical writing emails to teachers on how to best attend to the needs of their students and filling out the endless paperwork that comes with being a special education teacher.
When asked if she thinks this will actually be her final year she laughed and said, “it better be! I was born during World War II; I can’t keep doing this.” Richardson has been with the Winslow Unified School District since 1995 as a full-time special educator at Bonnie Brennan Elementary School, Washington Elementary and Winslow High School. Before that, she worked in schools in Chinle and Parks.
While working in Winslow, she also worked nights at Northland Pioneer College as an English teacher and helped people prepare for their GED exams, but these days she only works at the high school. When she was supposed to retire last year, she noticed that her colleagues all had difficult caseloads and decided she couldn’t just leave them.
This year, her main role is to be there for the other people in her department, helping them handle all the paperwork and extra responsibilities that come with such a demanding job. “I am really good at all the specialized paperwork and so I can help out without having a caseload. It allows the other teachers to spend more time face-to-face with students giving them the attention they need,” she explained.
That being said, she still sees students and patiently works with the most stubborn of kids until they can produce the work they need to get done. She explained that her philosophy on special education is that students should be included in regular classes as much as possible, getting the same information everyone else is and then facilitating their learning, rather than taking them out of that environment and teaching them a simplified version of the curriculum. Because, according to Richardson, that is the only real way to make sure everyone is getting the help they need as well as being challenged academically.
She noted that every educator gets the opportunity to see a student grow academically, but special education teachers get a more comprehensive view of a student’s progress. Richardson says the thing that makes special education so “special” to her is the ability to see students progress in many different areas. This includes being able to follow a student from freshman to senior year and see them improve their social skills, academically and, for some of the high-needs students, seeing them gaining more independence.
“The thing about being a special ed teacher is you can really work one-on-one with these students and pull them back from the brink of dropping out,” which Richardson pointed out is not such a simple path once a student drops out of high school to obtain a GED. Her number one goal for all her students is getting them to graduation.
When the stars align and she finally retires, she plans on spending time in San Antonio, Texas, with her daughter and grandchildren. But whether she retires now or celebrates a decade of being on the verge of retirement, WUSD will have a lot to be grateful for from this dedicated educator.
