“I’ve Had a Wonderful, Long Career”

Carol Reimann leads her final teachers in-service session before her retirement on Friday, April 27, 2018 at Matthews Elementary School in Sikeston, Missouri.

Fred Lynch ~ Southeast Missourian

Carol Reimann looks back on her 50-year career in education

Name the last four Miss Americas.

Name the last three Emmy-winning best actors.

List the last five World Series winners.

Can’t? You’re not alone.

“Those were the greatest of the greatest, but you can’t remember them,” Carol Reimann says. “Now, name your first grade teacher.”

Carol Reimann teaches her first-grade students in November 1974 at May Greene Elementary School in Cape Girardeau. Reimann was recognized as Missouri’s Outstanding Young Educator that year by the Missouri Jaycees.

GORDON L. McBRIDE ~ Southeast Missourian archive

Reimann says when asked this last question, most people start to smile. Even though they can’t name celebrities a few months after awards have been received, they can name the person who taught them for a year when they were 7 years old. They can maybe even conjure up a story about him or her — because that person cared.

Reimann is one of those people who cares. She taught first grade for 33 years: at May Greene School for 13 and at Clippard Elementary for 20. For the past 17 years, she has worked as the assistant director and now the literacy consultant for the Southeast Regional Professional Development Center, directing professional development workshops for teachers from Saint Louis to the Arkansas border.

In May, after more than 50 years as an educator, she is retiring.

Reimann is wearing a black shirt with beaded sequins running down the front and sewed around the sleeves, dangling black and sparkly earrings that shine when the light hits them and several layered necklaces. She knows she doesn’t look or dress like a typical teacher: she says she used her love for sequins and glitter to wear fun outfits that her first grade students were excited to come to school each day to see. (She also painted shirts to match books that she read to her students.) Her propensity for glistening is how she got her nickname: Sparkles.

And sparkle she does, in both attire and personality. One of the most important facets of life inside and outside of the classroom, she says, is to remain positive.

“I’m a very positive person, and I think that kids get enough negative in the world,” Reimann says of her teaching style. “If I had a child misbehaving, I would try to find a child who was doing the right thing and praise that child. As soon as I saw the misbehaving child do the right thing, I would praise them. I was a real hand-shaker, a real pat-on-the-shoulder [teacher]. We clapped for somebody who did a good job … They want attention and they want love, so that’s what I intended to do, just be positive.”

This positivity, combined with her family’s support and her faith, also helped Reimann survive three battles with cancer, experiences enabling her to help other women through a Reach to Recovery program.

“With my life, you have to be positive,” she says. “You can look at the negative with cancer, but my husband has been a wonderful help to me, saying, ‘We’re just going to be positive about this.’”

A rewarding journey

Reimann’s third grade teacher, the late Ms. Margaret Reed, is one of the people Reimann recalls with a smile and a story. It was in Reed’s classroom at the age of 9 years old that Reimann first began teaching.

“My third grade teacher was the one who set me on the path to be a teacher,” Reimann says. “I finished my work early, and she saw something in me that I didn’t see, and she let me work with other kids.”

Carol Reimann, also known as Sparkles, holds her granddaughter, Reese Davis, who is fascinated with Reimann’s earring, at a retirement reception at Kem Statuary Hall.

Fred Lynch ~ flynch@semissourian.com

Another educator who helped the Southeast Missouri State University graduate through the initial stages of her teaching journey was the late Ms. Eileen Klaproth, whose classroom was next to Reimann’s during her first years at May Greene School. She helped Reimann develop day-to-day routines for her classroom, skills that could only be taught through experience, such as strategies for taking lunch count and lining up students.

“Had it not been for her, I may have quit,” Reimann says.

But quit is one thing Reimann didn’t do. During her career, Reimann taught the children of many of her students, and in her final year of teaching first grade, she even taught a grandchild of one of her first students — a boy who didn’t mind announcing to the class each day that their teacher had taught his grandmother, Reimann recalls, laughing.

“The greatest thing is you’ve got to love what you do, you’ve got to be committed to it, you’ve got to stay up on the latest and the greatest,” Reimann says of what our schools and students need in teachers. “For us to stay up as a country, as a state, we’ve got to be right there on top. We’ve got to create good citizens. Kids — they’ve got to be loved and they’ve got to enjoy school, because you learn so much more when you enjoy something … and in the classroom they need to see democracy at work.”

Reimann’s educational beliefs and ability to enact these convictions in the classroom earned her the title of Missouri Teacher of the Year in 1997. The year “opened many doors” for Reimann, she says, including speaking with the Missouri Legislature on behalf of Missouri teachers, going to space camp (where she sewed sequins onto her spacesuit) and meeting Bill Clinton, who was the president of the United States at the time.

But Reimann’s Missouri Teacher of the Year journey didn’t end there. This past fall, she received news that one of her former first grade students, Beth Davey, who now teaches music at Iveland Elementary in St. Louis, received the distinction of being the 2017-2018 Missouri Teacher of the Year. This was the first time in Missouri history that a Missouri Teacher of the Year had been taught by a former Missouri Teacher of the Year.

Missouri Teacher of the Year is not the only award for teaching that Reimann has received. In 1974, Reimann was the first woman to be named the Missouri Jaycee Outstanding Young Educator, and in 1994 she was named the first Chamber of Commerce Elementary Educator of the Year. She was also one of 10 finalists for the National Teacher Hall of Fame.

Retirement plans

Reimann is involved in Alpha Delta Kappa and Delta Kappa Gamma, honorary teacher’s sororities; she has served as the chapter president and state president of Alpha Delta Kappa, even serving at the international level the year she was the Missouri Teacher of the Year. She is also a member of P.E.O. International, a philanthropic educational group, and serves on the Cape Girardeau Public Library Friends of the Library board, heading the twice-a-year book sale. Reimann also is active in her church, playing in the bell choir and participating in the altar guild and ladies aid.

In retirement, Reimann is looking forward to having more time for antiquing, embroidering and traveling with her husband, Paul, in their camper, as well as spending time with her grandchildren and volunteering in the community. She and Paul live on a farm outside of Cape Girardeau where they raise beef cattle and Tennessee Walking Horses. They have two children and six grandchildren.

Reimann has seen many changes in education since she first entered the profession 50 years ago. One of the biggest, she says, is collaboration among teachers, grade levels and school districts. Another is the creation of learning standards, as well as an integration of technology into the classroom. Education also now focuses on differentiation for each student and using research-based best strategies and practices for instruction.

Despite these changes, Reimann says that at least one thing remains the same.

“Education has changed a lot, but still — the teacher’s the important thing in that classroom,” Reimann says. “Technology’s great, don’t get me wrong, but that teacher makes learning come alive.”

“I love teaching,” she says. “It’s the most rewarding thing that I think you can do in your life.”