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School board tips cap to teachers
Teacher Appreciation Week prompts open letter to teachers
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A phone call around midday Tuesday from Bryan County Board of Education Chairman Eddie Warren began with a question.
“When’s your deadline for Wednesday’s paper?” Warren asked. “I’ve got an open letter to the teachers of Bryan County.”
Warren was told the deadline for the News’ opinion page — which is where letters usually go — was already past, but there was still time to put together a story.
After all, it is Teacher Appreciation Week.
“We as a school board just wanted the teachers here to know how appreciated and valued they are,” said Warren, who can name two teachers from his days at Weaver High School in north Alabama who made an impression.
“I had Mrs. Williams who taught me English and psychology and Mr. Fincher who taught me history,” Warren said. “They were impactful.”
In fact, while administrators and school board members may devise policies and plans, at the end of the day it’s the teachers whose work matters most.
“As school board members, we’re a lot less impactful on education than a teacher is,” he said. “We make the big decisions, but teachers are the ones who have an impact on children. No one’s going to remember in 20 years I’m on the Board of Education, but they will remember their fourth-grade teacher or sixth-grade teacher, that teacher that had the biggest impact on them.”
There are certainly plenty of teachers in Bryan County to appreciate. Bryan County Schools are the single biggest employer in the county with more than 900 employees — between 400 and 500 of them are teachers.
The work of each is important, the BoE chairman said.
“Teachers are the ones on the front lines taking care of what needs to be done on a day-in, day-out basis,” said Warren, whose wife and daughters are educators. “My wife still sees people she taught in first or second grade that are grown now and have children, and they still remember her. School board members may get their names on plaques, but teachers are the ones who will be remembered.”

Here’s the letter:

“Teachers have their sights set on the real goal: not to produce Ivy League graduates, but to encourage the naturally curious, confident, flexible, and happy learners who are ready for whatever the future has in store.” — Taylor Mali

To All Bryan County Teachers:

We want to extend our thanks to you, especially during this Teacher Appreciation Week. We are grateful that you have chosen to work for Bryan County Schools. And we are grateful for the tireless job that you do every day.
We know the infinite value of great educators and the great impact you have on our Bryan County Students. Thank you for choosing to impact the future in such a profound way. You truly exemplify the Bryan County Schools commitment “to excellence and success in all we do.”

Sincerely,

Eddie Warren, Board of Education Chair
Joe Pecenka, Vice Chair
Paine Bacon, District One
Dennis Seger, District Two
Amy Murphy, District Three
Marianne Smith, District Four
David Schwartz, District Five

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Later yall, its been fun
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This is among the last pieces I’ll ever write for the Bryan County News.

Friday is my last day with the paper, and come June 1 I’m headed back to my native Michigan.

I moved here in 2015 from the Great Lake State due to my wife’s job. It’s amicable, but she has since moved on to a different life in a different state, and it’s time for me to do the same.

My son Thomas, an RHHS grad as of Saturday, also is headed back to Michigan to play basketball for a small school near Ann Arbor called Concordia University. My daughter, Erin, is in law school at University of Toledo. She had already begun her college volleyball career at Lourdes University in Ohio when we moved down here and had no desire to leave the Midwest.

With both of them and the rest of my family up north, there’s no reason for me to stay here. I haven’t missed winter one bit, but I’m sure I won’t miss the sand gnats, either.

Shortly after we arrived here in 2015, I got a job in communications with a certain art school in Savannah for a few short months. It was both personally and professionally toxic and I’ll leave it at that.

In March 2016 I signed on with the Bryan County News as assistant editor and I’ve loved every minute of it. My “first” newspaper career, in the late 80s and early 90s, was great. But when I left it to work in politics and later with a free-market think tank, I never pictured myself as an ink-stained wretch again.

Like they say, never say never.

During my time here at the News, I’ve covered everything that came along. That’s one big difference between working for a weekly as opposed to a daily paper. Reporters at a daily paper have a “beat” to cover. At a weekly paper like this, you cover … life. Sports, features, government meetings, crime, fundraisers, parades, festivals, successes, failures and everything in between. Oh, and hurricanes. Two of them. I’ll take a winter blizzard over that any day.

Along the way I’ve met a lot of great people. Volunteers, business owners, pastors, students, athletes, teachers, coaches, co-workers, first responders, veterans, soldiers and yes, even some politicians.

And I learned that the same adrenalin rush from covering “breaking news” that I experienced right out of college is still just as exciting nearly 30 years later.

With as much as I’ve written about the population increase and traffic problems, at least for a few short minutes my departure means there will be one less vehicle clogging up local roads. At least until I pass three or four moving vans headed this way as I get on northbound I-95.

The hub-bub over growth here can be humorous, unintentional and ironic all at once. We often get comments on our Facebook page that go something like this: “I’ve lived here for (usually less than five years) and the growth is out of control! We need a moratorium on new construction.”

It’s like people who move into phase I of “Walden Woods” subdivision after all the trees are cleared out and then complain about trees being cut down for phase II.

Bryan County will always hold a special place in my heart and I definitely plan on visiting again someday. My hope is that my boss, Jeff Whitten (one of the best I’ve ever had), will let me continue to be part of the Pembroke Mafia Football League from afar. If the Corleone family could expand to Vegas, there’s no reason the PMFL can’t expand to Michigan.

But the main reason I want to return someday is about that traffic issue. After all, I’ll need to see it with my own eyes before I’ll believe that Highway 144 actually got widened.

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