ROBERT PIERCE
• Leader & Times
The school year in Southwest Kansas ended in May, and for one longtime educator, so too did a career.
Jerrilynn Wood got her bachelor’s degree in elementary education from Southwestern Oklahoma State University in 1992, and the now former Kismet Elementary School principal said a career in education seemed a natural fit even from an early age.
“I really liked school, and I was really passionate about learning,” she said. “I played school when I was a little kid and taught Sunday school when I was in high school. I was a teacher’s assistant for the elementary teachers when I was in high school, and it just seemed like a natural thing to go into.”
Before going to KES, Wood taught at several USD 480 schools, including Washington Elementary, McDermott Elementary and what is now Sunflower Elementary. All of that took place before the end of the 2009 school year, and although her children lived and went to school in the USD 483 school district, she was teaching in USD 480.
Wood said openings in the USD 483 district did not happen often, but in 2009, as she was departing the Liberal school district, an opening came up for a fourth grade teacher at KES. She applied for and got the job.
Before becoming principal, Wood taught for two years in Kismet, and later because of overcrowding at the elementary there, KES was consolidated with USD 483’s other elementary school in Plains.
“We had kindergarten through second grade at Kismet and third, fourth and fifth grades at Plains,” she said.
So Wood taught at Plains Elementary School for two years, all the while working on her masters degree in administration. Around this time, Louise Wyrick was the principal at KES and had informed Wood she was going to retire.
“She didn’t have a definite time, and she really encouraged me to finish up my master’s program,” Wood said. “I respected her a lot and was inspired by that and finished up my master’s.”
Upon Wyrick’s retirement, Wood interviewed for the principal’s position at Kismet, and she said the rest is history.
Wood said she has had many great memories in her time with both USD 480 and USD 483, and she particularly enjoyed her time at Kismet Elementary.
“The staff here is great,” she said. “The families are great. There’s a real sense of family in the district. We celebrate the high school kids when they qualify for a state event, whether it’s cross country, music or forensics. They really include the elementary kids, and we send them off with a bang. It helps build the spirit in the school system.”
With schools in three different locations, Wood said the memories add up even more.
“The people who have taught with me here at Kismet, the paras the secretaries, the cooks and the custodians, everyone really loves the kids, and that has been very meaningful and very powerful,” she said. “Everyone takes care of everyone. It’s rare, and it’s a beautiful thing.”
As with many people, Wood said she has definitely seen the changes in technology in her 33 years in education.
“When I started teaching, I felt fortunate to have an overhead projector in my room and use those sheets you can use a marker on, and now, teachers have a smart board in their room that basically works like a PC,” she said. “That’s amazing to me. The way things move so quickly as far as the Internet speeds, that’s something the younger teachers don’t remember, but that is a big change.”
For the most part, though, Wood said kids have not changed.
“Kids are still the same,” she said. “Maybe our society has changed a little bit, but the kids who come to school haven’t changed. They still need the same things.”
For Wood, her biggest challenge in education is making sure every child’s needs are met, both socially and academically.
“They know they have a sense of belonging here,” she said. “We try to build on that relationship. Kids don’t care what you know, but they know if you care. Making sure that translates to every part of school from the classroom, the hallways, PE, recess, lunch, the buses, making sure that’s the environment and the culture we have in the building is the biggest challenge.”
Wood said she liked seeing the children of some of her former students or who went to school with her children in the classrooms at KES.
“That has been pretty fun to see, and we’re fortunate to have a lot of graduates from Southwestern Heights come back and be teachers or paras in the building,” she said. “That has been really neat to see kids you knew when they were young achieve the dreams and see them in a professional capacity. That’s been really cool.”
Wood may be retiring from education, but the work will continue, as she and her husband are in the process of buying a restaurant and bar in Cuchara, Colo.
“We’re moving up there and going to live the good life,” she said. “We didn’t see any reason to wait.”
As she reflected on more than three decades in education, Wood said she does feel sports seem to be becoming more important than academics even at the elementary level.
“I get concerned sometimes that we’re putting more value on those types of activities than we are on more traditional types of education,” she said. “There’s value in sports. There definitely is. Kids learn a lot in sports, but I don’t want it to take the place of what kids need to be successful in life in terms of academics. That’s the thing on the horizon that bothers me the most.”
Wood said she will definitely miss her coworkers and students the most.
“I worked with some wonderful people, and I’m going to miss seeing them every day,” she said. “Even on the hard days, this was a great group of people to work with. I will miss that.”
However, there are some aspects of teaching Wood will not miss much, if at all.
“I will not miss getting up at 5 in the morning so I can be here at 7,” she said. “I will not miss having to deal with the train blocking access to the school. That’s a regular occurrence.”
Wood said her and her husband are both excited and anxious for the next chapter in their lives.
“We love the community we’re in and raised our kids here,” she said. “We feel they had an amazing school experience, but we are extra excited to start this new chapter of our lives. We can’t wait to get out there.”
As for picking the current time for retirement from education, Wood said she has had time to think about retirement, and she made the decision early in the recent school year in September 2024. On her final day at KES in May, she said she had given the moment a lot of reflection, and though she faced a lot of lasts during the school year, for now, she feels good about the move away from education.
“I think right now, I don’t feel sad,” she said. “I think when school starts next year, I might start to feel a little bit of bittersweet memories or melancholy, but for now, I feel very confident I made the right decision. My husband and I are looking forward to moving on and not having to live life according to the school calendar.”
