Gamma Alpha receives the award for the Best Newsletter from State Communications Committee.
MEET OUR MEMBERS
"JACKIE SMART"
Since this is my final newsletter, I have decided to be this month’s M.O.M. for two reasons. First, it is so difficult to get members willing to turn copy in and second, I don’t want Cindy Dietz, our new newsletter editor, hounding me in the future for newsletter copy!
Our school music teacher, June Chartrand, sponsored me for membership. June’s class was next to mine and we became a good friends as well as colleagues. She and her husband attended my wedding in England and have since become surrogate grandparents to my two daughters.
June insisted that Gamma Alpha only want members who are willing to get involved. Even with this warning, I was initiated in 1990. I was reluctant to jump right in at first, because my girls were three and five at the time. (It is only recently that I have been "let out" to attend dinner and the meeting.) Esther Loskowske suggested that I sign up to be on the Yearbook Committee since the work is finished in October. Esther and I copied and collated the yearbook. Sandy Becher did all the hard work, such as writing it, though. Those were the years when we used our school’s bookbinders. The yearbooks that were bound by me were always just a little wrong and all of the Wayne-Westland members got the ugly ones. I have also been a member of the Service Projects committee and have also chaired the committee. I like working on this particular committee because doing things for those less fortunate is very rewarding. I was also a model for one of our fashion shows that Personal Growth sponsored for the Chapter Scholarship Fund. It was great fun.
Alice Duke asked me to do the newsletter for our chapter in the winter of 1995 and it has been a labor of love ever since. I knew how I wanted it to look, but being computer illiterate at that time, I had trouble. So I immediately enlisted the help of my husband, a Ford computer nerd, who helped set up a format that even I could use. He shares the three awards Gamma Alpha won for best chapter newsletter. He has also put all of our newsletters on-line:
and will continue to do so if Cindy’s computer and our computer can talk to each other.
I attended my first State Convention at the Grand Hotel in 1991 and was inspired to get more involved. I started going to Fall Workshops and more of the State Conventions; mostly so Alice wouldn’t have to go alone. I started to see a "bigger picture" of our Society. Alice and I shared a room on all these workshops and conventions. Like many women on the news, I can say that I slept with a President, too!
I attended the University of Michigan and graduated with a major in English Literature and Elementary Education way back in the "Big Chill" days of 1969. I taught third and fourth grades in Chicago for four years. I started my Masters work in Chicago, but returned to Michigan and finished my degree at Eastern Michigan University in Learning Disabilities.
I taught at P.D. Graham Elementary School in Westland for eight years upon returning from Illinois. Graham was an individually guided educational program where the students were multi-age grouped. (You can tell this was one of those seventies’ ideas!) I taught in a fourth, fifth and sixth grade team teaching classroom.
In 1980, enrollment went down in Wayne-Westland and although I was not pink slipped, I was displaced from Graham and ended up teaching Special Education for nine years. I have been a cross-categorical special education teacher, a resource room teacher and a teacher consultant for LD/EMI/EI. Basically the same job, only the title kept changing. Special Education in W-W bounces people around, so I was in several buildings during those days. For the past eight years I have been teaching first grade at Elliott and LOVE it. The school has a high number of At-Risk and special education students, so my Masters has definitely been helpful. This is my twenty-eighth year of teaching and I feel I could teach another ten years. With a ten and twelve year old and future college bills I probably will be teaching another ten years!
I am very happily married to my "stiff upper lip" British husband, Ian. We have two daughters, Rachel and Hannah. I am their official chauffeur who ferries them to dance, piano, flute, clarinet, track, band, girl scouts and horseback riding lessons. I know many of you have been through this before, but since I had my children later than most sane women do, the constant scheduling of their events and mine is making me crazy. The girls have been helpful Gamma Alpha-ettes collating the newsletter, stuffing envelopes and even helping sort through all the items our chapter donates to the Family Center.
We travel to England regularly to visit relatives. We have also been on a cruise to the Bahamas. Arizona, Florida, Georgia and Mexico have also been on our vacation agenda as well as mini-trips around Michigan and Ontario.
My personal life is fairly boring. I am a channel surfing couch potato who loves English television programs, Frasier, Jeopardy, all the Star Trek spin-offs and ER. I have been known to zone on info-mercials, too. I like browsing the Internet. I love reading mysteries or historical fiction and never say no to a "he took me on the beach" romance novel. The English Literature degree seems to have been a waste…no classics here! I also like to lap swim and see Fran occasionally at Schoolcraft pool.
So, this is your new President for the next two years. I hope I can as good a job as the women who have preceded me.