As the 2010-2011 school year draws to a close, three longtime Wiscasset Middle School educators will be retiring this summer after a combined 112 years of teaching. The loss will be acutely felt said WMS Principal Linda Bleile.
“All of them will be tremendously missed,” said Bleile. “Bob and Diana and Fran have been huge parts of our lives and the lives of the community.”
Sixth grade teacher Fran Clark said she felt “the time was right” to start a new chapter of her life while husband and wife Bob and Diana Sommers, who have a collective 75 years at the school in a variety of roles, decided to retire together after changes to the state retirement system forced their hand.
“We weren’t planning on retiring now but given the uncertainty in the state we felt the time was right,” said Diana Sommers.
The Sommers say their years at the school were a “blast” but say children, like society, have changed over the years.
“We always have great kids but now you have to pull them a little more to learn,” said Bob Sommers. “The work ethic has changed. They used to meet you in the middle somewhere but now you have to go a little further. I’m not sure if that’s a negative or a positive.”
Despite this, which they both say had no impact on their decision to retire, the couple says education through technology has actually made kids smarter.
“I think students retain more knowledge,” said Diana Sommers. “When they have to take information and shape it through a presentation it requires more than just memorizing a fact.”
The Sommers will finish their careers as technology directors for the school and were early converts to computers, a scarce classroom sight when they started in the 1970s, but now as ubiquitous as chalk once was. The husband and wife team are considered pioneers in the state for their efforts to integrate technology in the classroom. In 2010, the pair received the John Lunt Friend of Technology Award from the Association of Computer Technology Educators of Maine, a group they coincidentally helped to form
Diana Sommers, who used to program her own computers in the infancy of classroom technology, said the changes have been drastic. The Sommers added that Wiscasset was well positioned for the introduction of computer-aided instruction due to the tax revenue generated in the 1980s from the defunct Maine Yankee nuclear power plant.
They have seen the technology grow from crude cumbersome machines to the stack of sleek and shiny Apple laptops that occupy the tech lab they work in now.
“The on demand information is incredible,” said Bob Sommers. “You have information at hand, constantly updated, and have to learn what source is the most accurate.”
Bob Sommers has been a presence beyond the middle school through stints as a basketball and soccer coach. He said wherever he goes he will see a former student or the child of a former student.
“Now I’m teaching the grandkids of my former students,” said Bob Sommers. “I’ve even had former students become colleagues.”
The couple met while attending primary school in Freeport and have lived in Lincoln County for over 30 years. They say retirement will be bittersweet but busy with travel plans to Civil War battlefields, quality time with their grandkids, and most importantly, golf.
“I had asked some of my kids; how many first days of school have you had?” said Bob Sommers. “They’ll say 10 and I’ll say I’ve had 54. It will be strange this fall, I think that’s when it will sink in.”
One time Sommers’ student and now former colleague, WMS 7-8 social studies teacher Warren Cossette said he remembers Bob Sommers telling him in 1977 “next year you’re mine.”
“Both of them have been tremendous teachers not only in the academic sense,” Cossette said. “What they brought to the whole education system in Wiscasset is tremendous.”
Joining the Sommers in retirement is longtime sixth grade teacher Fran Clark who has been at WMS since 1988. Clark, who previously taught in West Virginia, said she was pleasantly surprised at the resources available when she started at the school.
“I was shocked. In West Virginia I had a $50 budget for school supplies,” said Clark. “So when they asked me to do the budget here when I started I thought, well that wouldn’t take long. I didn’t know it was a $2000 budget.”
The Waldoboro resident said retirement is just the next step in life and she will continue to pursue her passion for art. Clark recently completed a renovation of a wooden boat with her 86-year-old father and has no plans of settling down. She said she has enjoyed working with everyone at the school, especially those who have passed.
“People like Linda Hazard and Lynn Young,” said Clark. “I look back on these people and say we have really good memories.”
Bleile, who has been at the school for 39 years, said the retirement of the three will be especially hard on the close knit ranks of the town’s educational community.
“People always say so and so is replaceable,” she said. “The positions can be replaced but in this case we can never replace these people who are true educators in the best sense of the word.”