I Just Love Children
Editor’s Note: This is the first in a series to tell the story of some of the teachers in our schools. Each month a different teacher will be featured.)
Deloris Matthews, Washington Park Elementary School third grade teacher and the 2010 Jasper County Teacher of the Year, was never supposed to be a success in life.
Coming from a very sad beginning, living in a three room shack with her mother and brother, an outhouse for a bathroom, and a pot belly stove for heat, Deloris’ future was very dim. At age eight, her aunt, Mildred Dispain, who lived in Monticello adopted her. Her childhood was improved, but the baggage from her former life was very heavy for the young girl.
After graduating from Jasper County High School at 17, Deloris married and by 19 she was a mother. It was at this time—the first time she saw her baby girl in her arms—that her goal from then on was to provide for this tiny person, and try to give her a good life. Her marriage had started to deteriorate, and without any education beyond high school her prospects for a job earning more than minimum wage were slim.
She worked at the local Dairy Queen, the now closed sewing room and downtown Family Furniture. Then she began to work with the four year olds at Miss Kay’s Day Care, and she knew she had found her niche.
“I just love children,” Deloris said. One day while driving to work she heard a radio interview, “I don’t remember who was talking on the radio, but they were talking about getting a college degree. They said if you do not start to get your degree by age 30, you never will.”
Those words changed her life. Soon she applied for and got a job at Washington Park Elementary School as a paraprofessional teacher assisting the special needs teacher, Vanessa Sands.
Ms. Matthews said that Ms. Sands saw the potential in her as a teacher. “She encouraged me to seek a degree, so that I could be a teacher, too.” With the words of the radio interview ringing in her ears and the encouragement of Ms. Sands, she knew that it was now or never.
She began to take classes at Georgia Military College in Milledgeville, but soon realized that Mercer University in Macon was where she needed to be. The necessity to keep a steady job during the day to help support herself and child demanded that she attend night school at Mercer.
Four days a week, leaving Washington Park after school, and with the help of her mother-in-law, other family and friends, to care of her child, she journeyed to Macon, carrying a full load of courses, sometimes arriving home at 11 p.m. or midnight.
After she arrived home, she studied, wrote papers, and sometimes only had an hour of sleep before returning to her job at Washington Park.
“On the weekends, I spent all the hours I could studying.. I was determined to finish my degree and did.”
After only three years, Ms. Matthews donned cap and gown graduating cum laude with a bachelor’s degree in early childhood development. By 2005, she also had succeeded in getting her masters degree in foundations of education.
This year at Washington Park Elementary she is part of a EIP (Early Intervention Program) Team. The team will assist students who have low test scores or may have failed a section of the CRCT test and also to accumulate data to further help the students.
Her story is inspirational to anyone who doubts that he or she can achieve success in spite of when they have had a difficult early life. She has proven you can succeed with a lot of work, determination and by finding what you do best. She said, “I just love children,” and over the 16 years she has been teaching, she has proved it.
Ms. Matthews is the proud mother of Ashley who is married to Ryan Kelly and also a very proud grandmother to three grandchildren. She is engaged and plans to be married in October to fellow Jasper County Education employee, Perry Hyde.
Congratulations, Deloris! Thank you for being one of our many devoted teachers
