Adios, Senor Mac: McElderry retires after 24 years of service to ASMSA

Dan McElderry, left, listens to Dr. Mary Leigh, a humanities instructor, read the Dr. Seuss book ‘You’re Only Old Once,’ which was filled with well-wishes by his colleagues.

Adios, Cuídate, Señor MacMcElderry retires after 24 years of service to ASMSA

There is one thing Dan McElderry is extremely proud of about his 24 years of service as a Spanish and arts instructor at ASMSA — he never had to fail a student.

That’s not because he felt sorry for students who struggled or gave passing grades to keep his pass rate up. It’s because he never accepted mediocrity, said McElderry, possibly better known as Señor Mac by alumni, students and colleagues alike.

“I was a developing teacher before I got here,” said McElderry, who taught 14 years in junior high, high school and university programs before joining ASMSA’s faculty. “I was pretty accomplished but still growing. John Harrison, who was a teacher here, took me aside and said I was taking too much responsibility for students’ failure. He told me not only did I need to allow them to succeed but also allow them to fail. Give them the opportunity to fall on their face, but if they do fall on their face, be there ready to help them.

“Most of my students get A’s or B’s and I haven’t had to fail a student. I don’t accept mediocrity. Where are you if you are mediocre?”

Many of his tests would be done orally, especially as students moved into more advanced courses. If within the first or second question he could tell a student had not prepared, he would send them out of the classroom with instructions to go study more and come back later.

“At times, you’d rather have a fabulous C student rather than a lazy A student. The C student will work his heart out for you. Some of those A students come from their homes thinking they are better than they are. The C students may be more friendly and have a sense of cooperative spirit and a nice semblance of doing homework. Most of our students were dependable, cooperative and creative. That’s what I like,” he said.

His methods may have frustrated some students at times, he said. They would ask what he wanted specifically for certain assignments. Whether it was how many pages were required or how many words or something else, he would not give specific numbers. He thought if he did, students would work only to the required number and not push further.

“When you don’t set parameters, they go beyond them,” he said. “If I told them ‘Here’s the fence, work up to it,’ they would work up to the fence and stop. But when I don’t put up a fence, we see how far they can go. And they go all across the field — over and over and over again.”

The demand for advanced Spanish courses continued to grow during McElderry’s tenure. In his final year, he taught two sections of Spanish 4, in which students read literature in Spanish and studied other advancedtopics. He also taught a course of Spanish 5, in which studentsdelved into some sophisticated history texts in Spanish.

“It’s not ‘baby’ Spanish,” he said. While it was finals week of his last semester,many books in Spanish remained on the book shelves in his office. Pointing to them, he said, “All these books represent stuff that is not taught in most high schools. In Spanish 5, I was using those books to introduce them to other societies and cultures. That doesn’t happen at most schools.”

Besides teaching courses in native texts, another effective way McElderry encouraged students to learn Spanish was through study abroad trips that included living a period of time with a host family. While there are some good tours offered for students that provide an introduction to a foreign country, those don’t provide the same depth of experience as an immersion trip, he said.

He said he started taking people to Mexico in the 1980s while he was teaching at North Pulaski High School in Jacksonville. By the late 1990s, he began taking students to Spain. Those included extended homestays with families while they took classes at a local school or college for at least a month. The last 10 years, he began taking people to Costa Rica.

The advantages of all of those trips were participants were involved with the native people as well as people their age. “When you meet people, the trip comes to life,” he said. “You can stand at the Eiffel Tower all day, but when you’re with a family, the trip really comes to life.”

The trips also teach students to rely on themselves and encouraging future international trips. “I don’t treat them like a mother hen with chicks. During the first week, you may, but you teach them to live and survive. You’re there for them, but you expect them to get out on their own. I teach how to be a citizen of the world. They learn how the country functions while living with the family. They learn how to get around and how to take care of themselves,” he said.

McElderry said he’s often asked if he’s not afraid to encourage independent travel in a foreign land. Besides the native Spanish-speaking countries already listed, he has been on trips to France, Italy, Spain, England and Japan. His answer is always the same.

“I always say no. I’ve been to so many places. There are things you need to learn in case you get in a bad situation, but you use your knowledge and most situations work themselves out,” he said.

Those trips have also resulted in many former students telling him how they have gone on to do further study in Spanish in other countries or taken jobs in foreign countries.

“I get contacts all the time form students out in the world. I can’t tell you how many students have gone on and done something with their Spanish or another language. It just amazes me,” he said.

McElderry also had the opportunity to share his love of art with students at the school. When he first joined the faculty in August 1995, the school did not have anyone teaching art classes.

McElderry,who minored in art, and chemistry instructor Fred Buzen taught a photography class together. McElderry added the Science of Art and Design, black and white photography, 2D design, 3D design and sculpture to the courses he taught.

“I scouted around where could I teacher art classes. I started unlocking doors and found rooms piled with furniture. I turned them into an art room. My favorite was teaching 3D art. I really loved it,” he said.

Eventually as other faculty members who could teach art were hired, McElderry refocused on teaching strictly Spanish.

“It was hard to give it up,” he said. What made it easier, however, were the European study abroad trips in which he became involved. “As I was doing that, it exposed me to all this culture. I went to the Picasso museum. Visited museums in Barcelona and went to the Louvre and saw all this artwork by fabulous artists.”

McElderry said ASMSA has always had a strong contingent of instructors to match the caliber of students. He said he’s done his best to offer advice to new colleagues who may accept advice from an older, matured and experienced teacher, just as Harrison did for him early in his ASMSA career.

“It feels kinda good. I think they look at me as the grandpa of the department. They tease me mercilessly, but they do come to me to talk. They kept me laughing for years,” he said.

Dr. Mary Leigh, a literature and composition instructor in the Humanities Department, said McElderry reached out to her on her first day of campus.

“He showed me around, introduced me to the faculty, and made me feel like I was a part of the campus community from that moment,” she said. “I was nervous about teaching in a new school, and he was very encouraging. His advice to me was to try everything I thought might work — you will succeed in some things, find out what doesn’t work in others, but you will always gain something valuable from trying it. It gave me the courage to really make my classroom my own, and I don’t think I would have gotten there so quickly if not for him. I will miss him tremendously.”

Dr. Dan Kostopulos, Humanities Department chair, said McElderry offered stability and wisdom to the department and to students.

“Even though he’s never been department chair or an administrator, Dan McElderry has been the rock of the Humanities Department for a long time,” Kostopulos said. “All of us have relied on his guidance and professionalism as an example of what great teaching and collegiality should be at ASMSA.

“For students, he was often like a surrogate parent away from home, sometimes bringing them fresh-baked cookies from home but still demanding excellence in Spanish from them all.”

McElderry said as he has grown older he was often asked when he’d retire. He would say that as long as he feels that he was doing a good job and the students were having a good and worthwhile experience, he would continue to teach. Circumstances over the last few years led him to believe it was time to make a change.

He became ill last year with a rare bacterium that was destroying his lung. He eventually had to go to have half a lung removed to stop the spread of the disease.

“It was attacking me, and I was sick about seven months. It scared me,” he said. While the surgery helped restore his health somewhat, he thought that perhaps it was time to retire. “I don’t think I have it in me to be the teacher I have been,” he said.

Tearing up and his voice breaking, he also described the struggle his wife has had battling cancer. She retired two years ago and is in the midst of her third reoccurrence of cancer. “Part of it is we don’t know how long we have, and I need to be with her,” he said.

McElderry said his wife isn’t sure that he’s as ready for retirement as he thinks. “She says ‘Who are you going to talk to?’ She says I need to find some things to do outside of the house,” he said.

That may include taking some additional art classes. He said the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, the University of Central Arkansas and Arkansas State University at Beebe are all within half-hour drives from his home in Jacksonville.

“I can take classes for free. I’ll likely enroll in classes for the fall. Besides that, I’ll do something worthwhile, even if it’s volunteer time,” he said.