Jill Bennett mapped out her future at a young age.
“I’ve wanted to be a teacher since I was in third grade,” said Bennett, who retires this year following 25 years in education. “I’ve always liked working with kids.”
Bennett has taught the fourth grade at Mason Central Elementary in Erie for the past 11 years. She spent a decade teaching third grade before that and also had two years in special education at St. Pius X in Ohio.
More:Other educators retiring this year
A graduate of Start High School in Toledo, Bennett earned her degree in elementary education and a master’s in special education from the University of Toledo.
A lot has changed over the past two and a half decades.
“There’s a lot more structure to it now,” Bennett said. “When I first started teaching, you just taught what you wanted to teach. And now we have certain goals we have to reach. That’s not a bad thing.”
While she’s not completely leaving education behind, there’s a lot that Bennett will miss about being in the school every day, particularly the people she worked with and her partners in education. She also spoke fondly of the field trips that excited the kids the most.
“The most memorable was this field trip we used to take to Banner Oak School,” she said. “It’s an old, one-room schoolhouse. We would teach like it was the 1800s for a day. We’d play games, they’d learn from McGuffey Readers, there was a dunce cap.
“I don’t even know if they still do it now. I haven’t seen kids there in years.”
Last year, Bennett helped organize a Recess Writing Club.
“The kids really liked that a lot,” she said. “They got to publish a book. They made a book called Student Treasures. A company published it for them and they all got a nice hardcover book out of it.”
Teaching through the pandemic was the toughest part of Bennett’s career. The school closed down and went fully virtual in March 2020. Being a small district, the following school year was a mix of both in-person and online learning with an hour of online study after a shorter day in the building. The school briefly went fully virtual again around the holidays. The suddenness left many teachers feeling unprepared, she said.
“We weren’t set up for it,” Bennett said. “The kids didn’t all have computers. They didn’t necessarily know how to navigate the computer, and I didn’t necessarily know how to help them, especially over the phone. We just had to do it. Trial by fire, I guess.”
Even in retirement, Bennett will continue to work with kids. She was offered a part-time role in youth services in the Monroe County Library System at branch locations in Erie and Luna Pier. She volunteered in a similar role last summer.
“They offered me a sub position and then a regular position,” Bennett said. “It is my dream retirement job and since I had my years in, I jumped at it and took it. … So I’m still going to see the kids and do some tutoring. And some relaxing.”
Bennett said she couldn’t imagine retirement without her kids.
“Mason really has some of the greatest kids, I think, in the county,” she said.