The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
Veteran teacher loves being in classroom
In her more than 50 years as an educator, Sally Rogus has learned a thing or two about how to reach elementary school students.
It doesn’t have to do with stringent classroom procedures, overbearing schedules or being a gratuitous disciplinarian. It’s more about respect.
“The bottom line is respect. It goes both ways,” Rogus said during an interview in her office at the Madison School District’s North Elementary School April 7. “You can’t demand respect. You earn it.”
And she should know. She’s been teaching, in one form or another, since she was a young girl, thanks in part to her mother’s role as an independent kindergarten proprietor.
“I keep my mother’s picture in here because she taught first grade,” Rogus said from behind her office desk. “And then, when my sister came along, she started a private kindergarten and she picked up the students in her station wagon. They had class from one o’clock to four o’clock. Then, at four o’clock, she put them back in the station wagon and she delivered them back home.”
She said her mother taught the children of local professionals to fill a niche that existed before most schools had kindergarten classes.
Her mom ran a tight ship, she said.
“What she taught them then was unbelievable,” Rogus said. “I mean, they knew the president. They knew the vice president. They knew the secretary of state...”
With an influence like her mother, it’s no surprise, then,
that Rogus knew her calling at a very young age.
“I knew I wanted to be a first-grade teacher since my first day of first grade,” she said with a smile.
And so it went, although not directly. She said she began her career in Washington, D.C.
“I had a job training for a (General Schedule) 11 (position),” she said. “I was in charge of a clerical pool with 11 girls who had just graduated from high school and I read their letters and made changes and had them type them over again. And then I was the secretary to the assistant to the (head of) the meat inspection division in the (General Services Administration) Building. So I had a good job.”
She said it was when a friend who, unbeknownst to her, had scheduled an appointment for Rogus to meet with the then-superintendent of the Geneva Schools, invited her to spend a weekend in Geneva that she wound up getting into education.
“I said: ‘Mary Ann, I already have a job!’ And she said: ‘Well, you’ve got to go to the appointment.’ So I went over there and I talked to him for about an hour and he offered me the job,” Rogus said. “So I went back and I had to tell the GSA Department that I was giving notice.”
She said when she got back to Geneva and began observing the second-grade teacher she would replace, who was going on maternity leave, she noticed a few things that just didn’t sit right with her, including the tenuous influence the teacher seemed to have over the students and the fact that their schedule seemed too stringent. So she killed those two proverbial birds with one tactical stone.
“I was observing and at, like, 10 o’clock, they all just shut their books and said: ‘It’s time for math.’ And I thought: ‘This isn’t happening on my watch,” Rogus said. “So, when I got in there (myself), I said: ‘Here’s the deal. The schedule’s in my head. So you’re going to have to listen to me to know what class we’re going to have next.”
She said another teacher told her a few weeks later that her second-grade class was made up of the “difficult” students from the previous year’s first-grade classes.
“And I loved it,” she said with a knowing grin. “They were really neat. But they had to know somebody else was in control.”
She said being in control as an educator in an elementary school setting involves offering more than just the fact that you’re an adult and, therefore, just supposed to be in charge by default.
“You have to form a relationship with the kids. I always say that you need to show them that you care. They want to know: ‘Do you see me? Do you hear me? Do you care?’ If you can answer yes to those three, then you’ve got them right here,” she said, gesturing to her heart.
Her philosophy seems to work, as the student body at North Elementary is a pleasant, respectful one, from Rogus’ perspective.
“The kids here say ‘good morning’ to all of us each day,” she said. “They’re kind and caring.”
She said her staff, without whom she said she’d be unable to do the job she does, is elemental in helping the students develop those qualities.
“My staff — they model manners in the fact that, if a child says ‘good morning,’ they respond,” she said, adding that she thought that happened in every school but has been informed otherwise by outsiders who have commented on how positive an environment North Elementary enjoys.
But it’s not always smiley faces and gold stars. Rogus said some students inevitably get out of line at times. Whether it’s acting up to test boundaries, fights between classmates or the insidious signs that something may be awry at home, unsavory things can happen.
“If a kid is acting out, in my opinion, that’s a scream for help, that there’s something that’s upsetting them,” she said. “I don’t think there are bad kids. There’s just a message there and you have to take time to figure it out.”
But that’s not always the case and it pays to be able to discern the differences and act accordingly as an educator and role model.
“Some of them, I think, just act out to see where that line is that you draw,” she said. “And that’s when I, unless they’re hurting themselves or someone else, don’t give them attention for that. You give attention for positive behavior. And, then, if something happens like a fight or there is an argument, we bring them both in, one at a time, and get it sorted out and then they can get a consequence that suits what they did.”
She added that she has a valuable piece of advice for them which applies to almost any situation.
“I always tell them: ‘You teach people who you are by what you say and how you act. You can tell somebody you’re this kind of person but they’re going to listen to you and watch what you do to decide who you are and what your character is,” she said.
And it’s never too soon to begin teaching children that they’re individuals and there’s nothing wrong with being different from the next kid.
“When I taught first grade — which is my favorite, by the way — one of the first things we’d do on the first day would be that I would have the kids come up and stand next to each other and I would say ‘Some of us are this tall,’” Rogus said, making a height reference with her hand. “‘And some of us are this tall and some are over here. We have different color hair, different colored eyes. We are all different in those ways. We have different feelings and, guess what, we have things we do well and some things we have to work with, we struggle, and we just work harder on those things.’”
She said that helped even children as young as first grade to realize that we’re all different, to accept those differences and to appreciate them.
After 54 years in the field of formal education, there’s one thing Rogus has learned about herself that she said will keep her in the business as long as she can keep doing it.
“The reason I am still here is that there are still kids,” she said. “It’s all about the students. If the students weren’t here, I wouldn’t be here.”