McGEE: Teacher is a sports journalist on the side

old Arkansas Gazette.

I eventually wrote sports for several weeklies and biweeklies after that until I one day ended up writing sports for the Pea Ridge TIMES. All through these years, I have been a teacher who managed to work a bit on the journalistic profession though a lot of time, not for pay or salary.

Anyway, I learned this weekend that the world is a small place.

I also learned that though I am older that most teachers at 65, and that lots of folks leave the teaching profession for retirement long before 65, there are others who go well beyond 60 and even 70 in their educational careers.

Even more amazing was the fact that all the teachers that I (and we) had all those years ago, they all knew who we were. They regaled us with some pretty good stories, some of which I was sure were actually factual.

It gave some of my class members the opportunity to some things off their chest. They got the chance to confess things that they got away with back in the 1960s and ’70s. Since nobody was being nominated for a seat on the Supreme Court, nobody got detention, kicked out or calls to their parents. It was great.

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Editor’s note: John McGee, an award-winning columnist, sports writer and art teacher at Pea Ridge elementary schools, writes a regular sports column for The Times.

He can be contacted at prtnews@nwadg.com.