Clara Tennant: Always the teacher

Editor's note: Throughout the next few weeks, the Bigfork Eagle will feature the stories of some of Bigfork schools' longest serving teachers and staff as they prepare to retire at the end of the academic year.

As the oldest of eight and a regular baby-sitter, Clara Tennant has always played teacher.

Now that she's retiring after more than 40 years in education, including 21 in Bigfork, Tennant will have a hard time letting that role go.

Aside from her natural fit with teaching from her adolescent years, Tennant said it was also what made sense to her at the time.

"Back in the day, you really didn't have a lot of choices as a girl," Tennant said. "My mother was a teacher."

Tennant earned her degree in elementary education from the University of Montana-Western, with a minor in social studies. In her early years, she taught all grades up to eighth, but settled in sixth.

"I like the subject matter in the grade and the students' level," she said. "You don't have to find their mittens, but they're not dating yet."

Her first year teaching, in 1967, was in Echo, a one-room school between Echo Lake and Creston. Most of her teaching took her from school to school throughout the Valley, with one stint in Idaho Falls, Idaho, for a few years. That was the way of it then, she said, moving from place to place on the way up from a smaller school to a bigger one.

She coached at most of them, except Bigfork. Her sports included basketball, volleyball and softball.

She took some years off with her four children, and then taught in Mountain Brook for a few years before jumping at an opening in Bigfork, where she settled for the rest of her teaching years.

"This was plenty big enough for me," Tennant said. "I've liked it here very much."

As a sixth-grade teacher, "Mrs. Tennant," as she's known by her students, still gets to teach a bit of everything. Her favorites though are the work that combines social studies and language arts. Some of these projects are actually what her students remember most.

"I always read to the students while they were working [on big projects]," Tennant said. "Some come back and say, 'I remember the stories you used to read.'"

She tries to pick out books by famous authors that the students might not read on their own — and that relate to the subject matter of their projects. For instance, in their medieval unit, she reads "King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table" while they are working on their projects, wearing their crowns.

Her students know her for the phrase "You have minutes," which was her method of classroom discipline. A rowdy class that heard that phrase was calmed instantly, she said, as they had to sit and stare for one minute.

"It's quite effective," she said. "It's only a minute — but to them it feels like eternity."

The biggest change in her decades as a teacher Tennant said is the technology. "Kids who grew up with the computer have no clue that it was really hard," Tennant said.

Some of that new technology has meant additional training and learning for Tennant as well. The newest she's had to learn is the SMART Board, or interactive whiteboard, technology.

Schools also had to learn how to keep up with students who sought video games for entertainment.

"Kids are pretty much kids in a lot of ways, but they are more immediate," Tennant said. "They like things to be fast — right now."

Tennant could have retired 12 years ago, but she enjoyed it too much.

"I like the kids and doing things that are interesting," Tennant said. "If I'm bored, I figure they are too and we move on to something else. The days just fly by."

But, with her husband soon set to retire and her eligibility for both retirement in the education system and the early retirement incentive, she decided now was the time.

Tennant plans to do some traveling and spend some more time with family. She's also open to whatever the future may hold — another job possibly.

Her former students in Bigfork won't be saying good-bye forever in June though. Even though she's retiring, Tennant still plans to be back next year as a substitute teacher. That will give her a little more time with those teachers and students whose companionship she says she'll miss the most.

"I'll miss the hubbub of school," she said. "There's always something going on."

She lights up when she recalls old students and times where they've still kept in contact.

"I like to keep track of what everyone's doing," she said.

And, just like now, even when she does leave, she'll still carry the memories of Bigfork in a scrapbook she's kept of all of her students through the years.