“Mr. Ritenour” Interview

16 l 100 Years Edition l The Pepper Box Looking back with “Mr. Ritenour”

On January 8, 2019, Ritenour’s Activities Director, Jerry Nolen, officially announced his retirement, effective at the end of the school year. In the 105 years of existence of the Ritenour School District, Nolen has been involved for a total of 43 years; 13 years as a student and 30 years as an employee. The following interview was conducted by Caden Gaither.

Q: From the day you graduated to the day you retired, what were the biggest changes at Ritenour?

A: The auditorium, really. I mean, that was the biggest difference right there. The bond issue was passed, and the renovations— this whole area in the main hallway, the welcome center, was renovated; they gave it what I call the “Star Trek” kind of look. Some of the offices were renovated, the activities and athletics office is new because that was part of the auditorium and performing arts area.

Q: Of some of the changes that have happened over the years, what would you say impacted you the most as a teacher (whether positive or negative)?

The photo above is Jerry Nolen’s high school graduation photo from 1972. The photo below is his first photo as an employee at the high school in 2002. Nolen came back to the school district in 1992 and worked at Ritenour Middle School for 10 years before coming back to the high school. A: Well, from the time I was a student to teacher is the air conditioning. When I was here (c/o 1972), the only areas that were air conditioned were the library and the rooms below the library. They were brand new, newly built, so that area, the offices were new, air conditioned, but nothing else was. That has probably made the biggest difference on comfort. The other difference, I would say, is technology has changed, even from when I began as a teacher. The technology has changed, with the 1-to-1, with the computers in every classroom. They had computer labs when I started as a teacher, [but] there were no such thing as computers when I graduated as a student.

Q; Who were some students that stuck out during your years of teaching?

A: Mrs. Melly was one of them. She was one of my students when I came here to the high school. Ms. Beamer was one of the students, and Ms. Metz as well, so, I had several students in here. I’ve had a lot of great, great students. A lot of them came back here to teach, either here or in the district. There’s just so many that I couldn’t name them all.

Q; What was the experience like as a student at Ritenour in the 70s?

A: It was way different. We had 3,000 students in this building during my high school years. The main difference is that 9th grade was still at junior highs, so elementaries were kindergarten through 6th; 7th, 8th, and 9th were at the junior highs, and the high school was 10, 11, 12. There were 1,000 students in my graduating class. [The counseling offices hallway] was the senior hall. This was where the cool kids hung out. You were something, you were special if you had a senior hallway locker. The library was brand new. There weren’t as many assistant principals. The counselors focused more on getting kids into college and helping them prepare for college. Back then, it was the beginning of the push where everybody needed to go to college, which is horsehockey to me. I mean, everybody doesn’t need to go to college, find something you’re happy with, do it, learn how to do it well. The cafeteria was extremely different; the entire top floor where the classrooms are was an eating spot. There was an auxiliary cafeteria upstairs at the south end of the cafeteria. Basically, in one of the rooms, there was a dumbwaiter that they cooked food for. You could go to that line, or you could go to the line downstairs in the cafeteria, which has been remodeled as well. That was different, lunch was just massive. We didn’t eat in the foyer, but there was enough room to eat in the cafeteria. That was another change when I started teaching, we kept switching between 3 and four lunches. The staff could smoke in the teacher’s lounge. There was, a little later on after I graduated but before I came back, there was a smoking area for students. Even the office professionals could smoke at their desks, principals, and that was completely bizarre to me. There was no social media whatsoever. The “social media” at the time was, you folded up some paper and wrote a note to your significant other, and you handed it over while passing in the hallway. No hand holding, you got [detention] if you were caught kissing. That’s a huge transition. I’m so glad there was no social media, there’s pressure enough on students. There was still bullying, but not nearly as much fighting. I hardly remember any major fights… It was just super crowded. The intersection of the T and C hallways, you couldn’t move. I mean, you guys think you can’t move now, back then you couldn’t stir it with a stick, it was so crowded. Class sizes were huge. Down in the, I call it the team rooms,

Activities Director Jerry Nolen poses with October Maclin and Christine Farr on “Jerry Nolen Day,” a tribute to the educator who had spent his whole life in the Ritenour School District.

because at the time they were team teaching rooms, now that’s where Project Lead the Way rooms are, we had lecture classes for math and english of 90 plus students in there. The audio-visual was one of those rooms and we used movie projectors. No televisions, no DVDs, no computers, chalk boards. It was just hugely different. The student body is much more diverse now than it was. It was mainly a White middle-class area. Most of it was because of [the airport], there were a lot of engineers that worked at Boeing, there were a lot of manufacturers that worked at Boeing. We thought we were diverse, we thought that the African-American students here were enough, but it’s nothing like today. I just think today is so, so much better.

Q: What motivated you to come back to Ritenour as a teacher after your graduation?

A: The teachers that I had were so involved, and they took so much interest in you, as a student, as a person. We’d see them at football games, at concerts, at musicals, and there would be 20-25 of them. Due to the nurturing that I was given, that is when I decided to become a teacher, this was the only place I wanted to come and teach. Ritenour is family. I felt like I was part of a small town in a big city. For me, it was the only place I wanted to teach. It really frustrated my wife because I didn’t look elsewhere. I left teaching for a while, and when I came back, I only wanted to come to Ritenour. My daughter grew up here, she graduated from here in 2001. She became an educator, she only wanted to teach at Kratz. She ended up teaching at Ritenour Middle for a few years, then transferred to Kratz where she taught as a first grade teacher, and now she’s their librarian. I still feel [Ritenour] is my family. It’ll always be my family.

Q: Was there ever a time when you doubted your decision to become a teacher at Ritenour?

A: Yes. 1980, I started in ‘77, and there was a huge labor dispute between teachers and the school board, and at that time, there was no such thing as collective bargaining. I was a young radical teacher, just out of college, and I thought I was going to make a difference for the entire people. I stood up in front of a board meeting and said, “if this doesn’t happen, I’ll quit”. It didn’t happen, I quit. Well, that was kind of dumb, because thinking someone would take notice and say, “oh, this fantastic elementary teacher that we had quit, something’s wrong!”. Nope. Nobody cared. And those same teachers of mine I had in high school here, they were now my colleagues, and they were saying, “you can change your mind, you don’t have to quit”, and I was too idealistic. Now, let’s go to the flipside of that: I quit teaching, so I thought it wasn’t for me. When my daughter started in elementary, I started volunteering there, and I kind of felt it pulling at me again, so I wanted to come back to teaching. I became a much better teacher during those 11 years when I was gone than I ever would have, I think, if I had stayed. In teaching, you’re in your own world, and it’s hard work. You take it home with you, you never stop thinking about it. I had a job where I just went in and did my job and came home. I was in the heat, I was in the cold, I had production, there were a lot of pressures there too. I got to know what it felt like to be on the other side of the education desk, so to speak, as someone who was out of this realm. I think that made me a much better teacher, I can understand better how to deal with families. The “You Don’t Know My Story”, that became really important to me when I was out of teaching, to find out where people are coming from so you can understand. Stephen Covey said, “seek first to understand”. That was huge.

Q: Were there any school events that have stuck with you from your student years?

A: Homecoming was huge. There was a center track, so we’d have a Homecoming bonfire on Friday night. We tried it once when I was Activities Director, back in the early 2000s, and we had it on what is now the auxiliary softball field. It didn’t go as well, but I remember that bonfire. I was a band geek, so I was in marching band, so that sense of camaraderie, seeing the teachers at a lot of the events, that had a tremendous impact on me.