PHILLIPS — Phillips Elementary School kindergarten teacher Margaret Huff, of Strong, is definitely a morning person, and is known for getting to school at 5:30 a.m. on most days.

“It is way easier for me to get my work done early rather than having to stay late every night,” she said in a recent e-mail. However, she added, “Unfortunately, I do have to stay late for meetings or to finish my work not done. School work is like housework, it is never done!”

The longtime teacher is retiring at the end of this school year, having taught kindergarten at the Phillips school since 1975. In that time, Huff has witnessed many changes in education and to her work schedule. One of the most significant was the introduction of all-day kindergarten to SAD 58, and Phillips Elementary School, in 1999. Before that time, one group of students had a morning session, while the other group attended school in the afternoon.

“All day kindergarten is definitely way better, especially with the expectations we are required to meet now,” she said. “Most kids have been to daycare and/or preschool or head start, so are used to being gone all day. The children do very well with all day kindergarten.”

Another change has been computers.

“We hadn’t heard of computers when I started teaching, now my class has 4th grade computer buddies to work with them every Friday and I use an Ipad on the overhead almost daily!” said Huff.

The educational program, likewise, has changed. Huff noted that when she started teaching, kindergarten teachers were expected to teach letters, letter sounds, shapes, colors, numbers to 10 and social skills.

“Now, we are expected to teach all of the above plus three levels in reading, at least 25 sight words minimum, to write stories using beginning sounds, ending sounds, and a complete sentence, and the material covered in Common Core,” she said. “Plus, for math, number recognition and counting sets to 20 and basic addition/subtraction to 10.”

Another change was in the buildings she taught at. When she started at the Phillips Elementary School, the children in grades K-5 went to school in what is now the Phillips Town Office, while grades 6-8 attended school in the Paul G. Whittemore Building (now the Phillips Public Library).

Phillips Middle School was constructed on Blake Hill in 1988, and after that, children in grades 3-8 attended there while grades K-2 went to school in the former Phillips Elementary School, which was renamed the Phillips Primary School. After an addition was built onto the Middle School in 2003, all children in grades K-8 went to school there.

Despite the changes, though, some advice Huff has received she has been able to use with all generations of children and parents. Barbara Neil was the Phillips kindergarten teacher before her, and when she took Huff up to show her the classroom and everything was, she told her something that she took to heart.

“‘Your biggest challenge will be to keep the parents happy, then the administration is happy and everyone is happy!'” said Huff in recalling what Neil had told her. “I have tried to do just that and have found most Phillips parents so supportive over the years. I was also told if you are having behavior issues to call the parents and say, ‘How can we work together to improve so and so’s behavior?'”

She shared some of her special memories, such as an open house to meet parents and children the week before school started every year, and the children’s Halloween parade in town. Huff said she started the parade her second year of teaching and now it has been a tradition for 38 years.

They also did Christmas and spring plays at the Primary School, and lined the hallways to do Christmas carols and inviting the parents and visitors to join in.

“After that, we sometimes went to the town library or Edmunds parking lot and the last few years have done it at the school gym, but every year we have done it!” said Huff.

She made applesauce with the class and taught nutrition lessons. During several springs, a tarantula in a cage would be a centerpiece of science lessons.

Then, there were the Easter egg hunts with the class, as children searched for eggs hidden throughout the building. Another notable part of the kindergarten experience was the Letter People, which were enrichment lessons Huff did with the students that made learning the alphabet fun.

“If I ever ask former students what they remember about kindergarten, they always say ‘The Letter People,'” said Huff.

Occasionally, the class would go on field trips. Huff’s favorites included going to Rockport to see Andre the Seal perform, going to the Gray Wildlife Park, going to the Cook Farm, and seeing how maple syrup was made at Rupert Pratt’s farm.

She said that while she has loved teaching for the most part and has not regretted choosing it for a career, “jobs are so scarce, and we just don’t have the ed tech support we used to have and the expectations/demands are really high right now.”

Now that she is retiring, Huff will get to spend more time with her family, especially her granddaughter who was born this spring.

Her outside interests include serving on the Strong Bicentennial Committee for the five years that they planned for the big celebration year; she was secretary for the group. Huff is the administrative secretary for the Strong United Methodist Church and sings in the church choir. She also has an interest in history, as she researched and wrote the history of the Phillips Primary School in 2002, wrote the history of the Strong Nazarene Church in 1974, and updated the church’s history in 1992.

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