There are plenty of teachers who love their work, but there aren’t many who love it so much that they teach for 54 years.
That’s right, Liane Hawkins has taught kindergartners for so long she’s retired not just once, but twice. She finally closed out her substitute teaching career just the other day at age 76.
“I’m the spirit of 76,” she laughs.
But if it weren’t for a bum knee, the struggle to carry her autoharp — remember those? — from the parking lot to her classroom and the challenge to rise from what she calls “those teeny, tiny chairs,” Hawkins would continue doing what she loves so much.
“Some teachers liked it when school days kept getting shorter,” Hawkins says. “For me, the school day wasn’t long enough.”
Ask Hawkins about her early days teaching, the era when The Beatles’ “I Want To Hold Your Hand” smashed record charts in 1964, and she says her job was pretty darn great.
But despite less freedom and more government mandates about what to teach, Hawkins also reports this era is pretty darn great too.
Still, there is much to mourn about old-school ways. Like chocolate pudding.
More on pudding in a moment. First, let’s talk parties because everyone loves a party — especially kindergartners. And teachers.
On her last day of teaching — this time she promises to retire for good — her daughter and grandson surprised everyone at Valencia Elementary School in Laguna Hills with balloons marking “54,” cookies with “54” in icing and a cake decorated with a host of photos over the decades of this teacher emeritus.
“It was the biggest surprise of my life,” Hawkins exclaims. “I couldn’t believe it.”
Mind you, “Miss Anson, Mrs. Strother and Mrs. Hawkins” — as she’s been known by her young charges — has taught the children of her former pupils.
Pudding principal
Hawkins grew up in El Monte and confesses her elementary school report cards often stated, “Liane needs to learn self-control.”
Translation: Liane was a talker.
But by the time she was in high school, she discovered she truly loved working with young children.
At the city recreation department, she helped kids whose parents couldn’t afford shoes. By 1959 she was 16 years old and armed with her first driver’s license. She often piled as many as a dozen children into the back of her dad’s pickup truck and drove from El Monte to hit the sand in Huntington Beach.
When it was time for college, she figured she’d work toward what in those days was called an M.R.S. major — a degree in going from a Miss to a Mrs.
But instead, Hawkins got serious about teaching and graduated with what she calls “a very antiquated certification,” one that no longer exists: a specialist in teaching children third grade and below.
“Everybody has their own forte,” she explains. “I do like the little ones.”
And the little ones like her.
One day, she taught children how to spell their names by tracing letters with their fingers, elbows, noses. But instead of crayons or paint, she used chocolate pudding. The kids loved it.
The principal … not so much.
“Oh my gosh,” the headmaster said surveying the chocolate-covered class. “What are you doing?”
“Why, we’re learning the alphabet and our names,” Hawkins said. “And we’re eating our names.”
‘Let kids be kids’
Hawkins cut her teeth teaching in Palm Springs. When Fountain Valley offered a job she left for the coolness of beach weather. There, she taught first and second grade.
But when Saddleback Valley Unified schools offered kindergarten, her dream class, she headed south and for decades taught at Montevideo Elementary School in Mission Viejo.
Back then, there were two kindergarten teachers in each classroom and they switched off mornings and afternoons, one being the other’s assistant.
“I loved it and kids learned a lot.”
Hawkins speaks to what many don’t realize. Being a teacher doesn’t end when school ends. Even kindergarten teachers have homework, prepare for and conduct parent-teacher conferences, write reports, create their own teaching materials.
But today, she reports, it’s common to have a single teacher in a kindergarten class. She praises volunteer mothers for filling in the gap.
“I couldn’t have survived without parent helpers,” Hawkins admits. “I’ve had so many.”
She also allows curriculum — yes, there is curriculum for kindergarten — is, well, more rigid.
“There’s a real emphasis on lesson plans, workbooks,” offers the veteran teacher.
For better — or worse — kindergarten is less about music, movement, dramatics, the outdoors and more about state mandates, what many dread as “book learning.”
“First grade is not first grade anymore. It’s second grade,” she reports. “And kindergarten is first grade.”
Among other things, blackboards are long gone in place of white boards. But Hawkins, who now lives in San Clemente, questions what’s on those white boards. She recalls a day when she walked into a kindergarten class and saw a chart explaining adverbs, nouns.
“Prepositional phrases in kindergarten,” the teacher sighs.
Call her oh-so “last century,” but Hawkins believes some of the lessons are inappropriate for such young minds. There will be plenty of time after kindergarten, she points out, for addition and subtraction.
“Kids should be hopping and skipping and jumping and doing physical things out on the playground.
“They should be learning to socialize, to get along. Kids should be kids.”
Beauty of today
Still, Hawkins says, since her early days teaching there has been much improvement.
The “Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood” television series, for example, helped teachers tackle such sensitive issues as divorce and poverty.
“I loved was ‘Mr. Rogers,’ Hawkins offers. “He taught how to be kind, how to problem solve. He talked about real issues.”
“Sesame Street” was another breakthrough and changed the zeitgeist of preschool and kindergarten. “‘Kids came to school knowing sounds, letters, numbers.”
Computers and computer lab are other favorites of both teachers and kids, Hawkins reports. Plus, there are more experts who visit classrooms to help with everything from reading to kickball.
But one thing that is now gone forever is Mrs. Hawkins’ autoharp, its case still festooned with the names of songs her students loved.
A favorite was, “The Old Gray Cat.” It’s simple, fun lyrics: “The old grey cat is stalking, stalking, stalking.”
Perhaps if you’re quiet enough, you can hear Hawkins strumming the chords.