Retired Teacher Has Lots To Offer

Leslie Newberry White has more than 40 years of teaching experience, and she really enjoys doing professional training, but she’ll tell you right off…you don’t have to love English for her to be able to teach you. As a matter of fact, she has always enjoyed teaching those students who have to work at it, and the ones who love English, well, they’re a boon for sure!

Mrs. White grew up in Powersville in Peach County, GA, on a Black Angus cattle farm. Her father was an officer and instructor at the Naval Academy in Annapolis where he met her mother where she had gone to the area to stay with her brother also in the Navy. The brother arranged a blind date, and the pair eloped 31 days later. The couple stayed in the Navy until the war was over, and then they moved to Georgia, he retired, and began raising cattle.

The youngest of four children, she was raised basically as an only child when she turned nine, because her older brother Jack was a junior at Georgia Tech, brother Jim married on Dec. 20, and her sister Pat eloped after Jim’s rehearsal on the 19th, leaving her as the only one at home. Today, she still has her older brother who recently moved to Rogers, AR, and a brother and sister who remain on the family farm with her sister continuing to raise cattle.

Her parents stayed on the farm until Leslie was ready to go to college, and then her parents retired to Sopchoppy, Fla. So, when she went to Americus to attend Georgia Southwestern College, she met her husband Paul White there. She was an English major who found she had to balance a love for pool tournaments with her studies.

Finding herself having to repeat a class, she met Paul and started sharing her notes. She said it took her all quarter to figure out if he liked her or just liked her notes, but they married in 1974 and both graduated from college.

She began teaching first at Crisp Academy and then Americus High School while he was a retailer of ladies and menswear, but when they moved to Fayetteville in 1986, he bought Regenstein’s in Buckhead, and she began teaching at Fayette County High School.

There she was named TOTY in 1992 for carrying out an innovative program, Learning Opportunities, created by her principal, and one she and others on the teams traveled throughout Georgia and other states sharing in conferences. In 1997 she headed up the English department at newly-opened Starr’s Mill High School where she had 17 teachers working with a student body of 1,500. Mrs. White really loves professional development, has spoken at various national and state English conferences since 1987, and acquired National Board Certification in 2002.

When Paul and she found themselves in the “empty nest,” they discovered Turtle Cove, bought a home, and met with Jackson High School who called her and her husband, also an English teacher since 1993, to come there to teach. It would take her from teaching high-achieving students and parents in Peachtree City to a locality where education may not be considered quite as important, based on demographics. Mrs. White felt this change in her career was directed by her Lord, and those years were some of the most meaningful experiences of her career.

Mrs. White retired in 2010 and became active in the Turtle Cove Woman’s Club. When her 98-year-old mother passed in early 2013, Piedmont Academy called a few days later, saying they had a teacher leaving and asked if she would be interested in filling in for the remainder of the school year. Believing her Lord was providing her with needed direction, she taught there for the rest of that school year and four more years before retiring for good, she says, when her husband also retired from teaching.

For the past two years she has volunteered with the Read-with-Me

program at Jasper County Primary School where she gets her “teaching bug” taken care of with these students as well as with their five-year-old grandson Gavin.

Since her retirement she has partnered with her husband in his small-business consulting firm, Prime Etc. She is presently tutoring three young men for SAT preparedness in Writing and Language. In addition, she offers her expertise in editing to small or large businesses, local government, and public and private schools.

Once she retired for good, she got more involved in the Woman’s Club where she serves as secretary. Recent projects involve the publication of a new cookbook and a Pancake Breakfast Fundraiser/Health Fair with a Bloodmobile a couple weeks ago; the Club raised enough money to purchase a defibrillator and learned from several of the participants that the Health Fair was a great help in managing their health.

She spent some time this summer teaching water aerobics. She has taken part in the aerobics class since 2003, and this year when long-time instructor LaDonna O’Bryon needed some assistance, Mrs. White told her she would teach the class this year.

The Whites have two children—Emily, an English teacher at Whitewater High School, who was selected as TOTY in Paulding County, and Jordan, an AP history teacher and coach for the girls soccer team at Duluth High School, and who, too, was selected as TOTY at his school.

Mrs. White says that since retiring, she has never felt as busy and useful as she finds herself here in her new-found community.