TEACHER'S CORNER: MORROW HAPPY TO TEACH AT KELLY H.S.

When Pat Morrow attended Kelly High School decades ago, she dreamed of teaching there. She has fulfilled that dream for 22 years, teaching junior and senior high school social studies and junior high language.

She has lived in the Scott County R-4 School District all her life and seen the school grow.

"I'm happy that Kelly has a good solid reputation and that parents want to move to the district so their children can attend our school," Morrow said. "However, I regret that we are losing that small-school atmosphere. I like greeting the students in the halls and calling them by name, but I cannot always do that now."

By staying in the community she gets to watch her students grow up, establish themselves in successful careers in the community and send their children to her classroom. "I am pleased ... to know that at one point in time, I was part of their lives," Morrow said.

She hopes that all her students focus on the subject matter and take her lessons to heart. "One of my rewards came last spring when a young man I taught in 1971 called me from Omaha, Neb., to thank me for sticking with his senior government class up to five days before the birth of my first child," Morrow said.

Morrow's main claim to fame might be her response to a former student's plight during the Persian Gulf War. While the Kelly alumnus hid in Kuwait, his friends and family did not know whether he was alive. Morrow and her students hung a map of the Middle East in her classroom with his name and the names of service men and women the students knew stationed in the area. KFVS and Channel 2 in St. Louis covered the activity.

Morrow likes to bring bankers, lawyers, world travelers, government officials, drug enforcement officers, and other outside experts to speak in her classes.

When she's not teaching, Morrow reads, gardens, cans and fishes. She's been married to Ottis for 33 years. They have two sons: one just earned a master's degree at the University of Missouri-Columbia and the other is an undergraduate at Murray State University.