TEACHER'S CORNER: BESSIE BUCK STARTS `NEW JOB' EACH YEAR

GORDONVILLE -- In each of the past 24 years, Bessie Buck has started a "new job" in the fall.

Buck has taught 23 years in the Jackson R-2 Schools. She teaches third grade and is the head teacher at the Gordonville Center.

"Every new school year is like a new job," Buck said. "No two classrooms of students are the same.

"We have only three classrooms at the Gordonville Center, and this provides a unique teaching opportunity. We have a very close-knit group of students. This gives an atmosphere similar to a family unit. I feel this gives the student a more secure feeling as he or she adjusts to the role of a full-time student."

In her 24 years of teaching, Buck said many humorous and unusual things have happened in her classroom.

"One recent one makes us aware of the changes of our vocabularies and word meanings," she said. "In a social studies class, when studying the holidays observed in the United States, the question was asked `Why do we celebrate Labor Day?' The answer given was `Someone just had a baby.'"

When students leave Buck's third-grade class at the end of the year, they go to a different school building for the fourth-grade.

"So I have a graduation exercise, complete with graduation hats and `Pomp and Circumstance,'" Buck said.

The third-grade parents and first- and second-grade students are invited as guests, and the ceremony is followed by a reception for the third-graders and their parents.

Although the youngsters "graduate" from the Gordonville Center, Buck keeps tabs on her former pupils through the news media.

"I feel a great sense of pride as I read of their accomplishments from junior high honor rolls all the way through to adulthood. I remind my students as they are preparing to leave my third-grade class that I will be following them by reading the paper and receiving comments from their future teachers. I tell them to always make me feel proud of them."

She is married to Kenneth Buck and has three daughters and three grandchildren. She lives in Gordonville, enjoys camping, sewing and growing flowers -- especially roses.

Buck is a member of Zion United Methodist Church in Gordonville and an officer at the local and district level of the United Methodist Women.

She also is a member of the Community Teachers Association, the Missouri State Teachers Association and ADK, a teachers sorority.