Shirley Shechtman has been alive a long time and teaching a really long time. At age 83, she has been teaching for 61 years!!!!!
Starting as a physical education teacher in 1946 and still works a six hour day plus another three days a week at an after school program. Currently, she is teaches at Hibbard Elementary School on Chicago's northwest side.
She is Chicago's longest-serving teacher, but Winifred Lowery is the oldest at age 86, but she didn't begin teaching until the late 1980s. There are two other teachers in Illinois who are in their 80s.
Right now, schools are coming to face the increased retirement of baby boomers. In the last five years, 5,938 teachers have retired (Liz and I are two of them).
What makes Shechtman's tenure even more remarkable is that she attended school at Hibbard in the late 1930s when her aunt was a teacher there. After getting her teaching degree at age 22, she taught a short while at Hibbard before transferring to Belden School. In the 1950s, while raising her family, she shifted to substitute teaching.
In 1964, she returned to full-time teaching.
She has seen lots and lots of educational ideas come and go, including the current No Child Left Behind.
In 1964, I was starting 8th grade. I taught from 1973 to 2006 and retired at age 55, not even as old as Ms. Shechtman has been teaching.
From December 23, 2007 Chicago Tribune "Over 60 years, teacher a study in nurturing" by Carlos Sadovi.
One Amazing Person. Now Here is Someone Who Remembers the Old Mimeograph Machines.--The Old Coot is Out Old-ed!!!
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