Jun. 7—A key life lesson that will immediately confront high school graduates: Change is inevitable. That same lesson confronts teachers who are moving on as well.
After 31 years at Clarkston High School, Brian and Margie Denton are making big changes. Brian, 56, is retiring and Margie, 55, is leaving the real world classroom for a virtual one.
“For me, it’s a change of pace, a change of passion,” said Brian, who sat in the faculty lounge with Margie at 8 a.m. Friday. The couple were preparing to send off the seniors with a barbecue on campus.
Margie is leaving her marketing and business classes to move to the school district office and teach in Washington’s Discovery Virtual School — a completely new experience for her.
Despite actually “retiring” from teaching math, the word “retirement” doesn’t fit Brian any better than it does Margie. Brian will be his own boss, working as a handy-man, as well as working harvest for a Palouse farmer. Teaching students is rewarding, Brian said, but so is building a wheelchair ramp for someone who is suddenly wheelchair bound and needs help quickly.
“It’s a different type of satisfaction,” he said. “I’m still helping people.”
Margie will be head coach of Clarkston’s volleyball and tennis teams. She just took on the volleyball job again, after stepping down as volleyball coach 20 years ago. She loves teaching kids how to visualize the possibility of success.
“I think I always tell kids, ‘Why not you? If someone is going to win, why not you?'”
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Both Dentons come from rural backgrounds. Margie grew up on a humble eastern Washington grain farm in the unincorporated town of Edwall, which is between Sprague and Reardan. Brian grew up working on his grandparents’ farm near Cheney. The lesson from farm life is that if you want to succeed, you work hard.
Brian, who believes that education is the best path out of poverty, has always tried to prepare students for the reality of life after school.
“Life is kind of tough. I tell them, life is a little tough,” Brian said. Students will enter a world where life is expensive and you need $300,000 to just buy a house. He worries that despite every teacher’s best intentions, young people aren’t ready for just how steep the climb toward success can be. “I don’t think we do it justice compared to what’s really out there.”
For the moment, the couple are looking at their mid-50s as a transitional time. They have two daughters who live and work in the area — they hope to have grandchildren. So they are tethered to the Lewiston-Clarkston Valley by family and their mutual belief that hard work makes a good life.
The other part of the lesson about how change is inevitable is that, no matter how prepared you are for it, it comes along with complicated emotions.
The Dentons are leaving a school campus where they’ve spent countless hours working over three decades. Their daughters went to school there. They used to bring their girls to shoot hoops and play there. Now they leave it behind.
“This place has been part of our lives, part of children’s lives,” Brian said. “It was our home and our playground.”
Ferguson can be reached at dferguson@lmtribune.com.