Hall of fame teacher
By Jennifer Roblez
Originally published 02:30 p.m., September 25, 2007
Updated 02:30 p.m., September 25, 2007
When I was 13 I had dreams of a sports career. Title IX, prohibiting sex discrimination in education, was on the horizon in the early 1970s and playing sports was all I thought about and all I did — softball mainly. Maybe basketball if Emporia High School got a green light thanks to IX.
I thought about studying physical education in college. I could teach and coach after that. It seemed as though my life lay before me all perfectly mapped out for the next 10 years.
Then I tore my right ACL before there was anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction, at least around here. A doctor in Topeka by the name of Trees, cut away most, if not all, of my cartiliage and told me to take up golf. He didn’t tell me I had torn my ACL — just that I couldn’t play sports anymore.
I limped to my freshman year without a map, without a dream. A year later, I tore my left ACL standing on a basketball court during practice when a player went after a loose ball and took a header into my knee. To blow both ACLs before the age of 15 truly was bad luck.
I didn’t think things could get much worse and they didn’t. Thanks to EHS English teacher Sharon Stephens. Today, I’d like to begin the process of nominating her for the National Teachers Hall of Fame. I’ll need her permission, of course, and I hope she says yes. More of her past students, administrators and colleagues will need to offer letters of support, too.
I should have thanked her long before now for kindling in me new dreams before I graduated from EHS in 1975. She suggested, perhaps without even knowing the effect it had on me, staying close to my athletic friends by writing sports stories for The Gazette.
I talked to the Gazette sports editor at the time, Ken Harrell, and he gave me my first assignment — cover a girls basketball game. I stayed up late writing the story and took it to him before school started. He published my little story on an inside sports page and gave me my first byline, which was unexpected.
That’s all it took and I was hooked; I’ve been a journalist ever since. I’ve reported and edited at some of our nation’s best newspapers. I’ve won awards, met presidents and fixed a few wrongs along the way. None of it could have happened without Mrs. Stephens.
Others at EHS helped too, like journalism adviser Eileen Peoples and school counselor/girls basketball coach Lloyd Steele. But Mrs. Stephens’s inspirational idea changed my life forever. She retired in 2004 from EHS after 35 years of teaching there and one year, her first, at Council Grove Rural High School. A total of 36 years.
She supported me when I didn’t know how to support myself. I loved her classes, wit and laugh. She opened more worlds than I can count — the Knights of the Roundtable, for one, and she taught me how to write and read good literature, which in turn opened up more worlds. She taught me to think critically — or just think!
Mrs. Stephens did the same, year after year, for many high school students. She didn’t play favorites. She gave everyone these valuable tools. They just mattered a lot to me, at the time, and they still do.
E-mail may be sent to Jennifer Roblez at roblez@emporiagazette.com.