The walls of Betty Love’s classroom used to be filled with stories.
The faces of former students smiling down from a wall covered with senior pictures. The large maps bearing the route of the Tet Offensive and the battlefields of the Civil War. The art, created by a friend and designed to inspire learning and thought. The quotes from Eleanor Roosevelt and Mahatma Gandhi. The plaque exhorting students to “Live History.”
The walls of Betty Love’s classroom used to be filled with stories.
Today, the walls are bare, a blank canvas for the next teacher who will fill the classroom. The only occupants of the room today are the ghosts of the past 30 years, the evidence of a teaching career full of life, love and learning.
Love, 53, a social studies teacher at Montezuma-Cortez High School, left her classroom for the last time this past week, retiring after 30 years of teaching in Montezuma-Cortez School District Re-1.
The hallways and classrooms of the schools in the Re-1 district are home to Love, a graduate of M-CHS whose own mother taught at the high school for 35 years.
“I was raised believing that teaching was one of the most noble professions you aspire to,” Love said, sitting among half-packed boxes in her classroom a week before retiring. “I knew I always wanted to teach. It was never really a question.”
After graduating from the University of Colorado Boulder with dual degrees in English and history, Love returned home to teach English at Cortez Middle School. Though full of lofty dreams and goals for her seventh-grade classes, Love said that first year was more about making it to the end of each day than finesse in teaching.
“I just wanted to survive,” Love said, laughing. “The first time in a middle school hallway between bells and classes, it was like a stampede of wild horses. They were so loud and had so much energy. I really felt like I had entered a zoo.”
After nine years at the middle school, Love transferred to the English department at M-CHS. For two years she taught the stories of literature, then moved to the history department, where she was able to teach the stories of her heart.
“I always wanted to teach social studies,” she said. “One of the reasons I was attracted to English was because I love stories, and history stories are the most inspiring because they tell the most about human nature. I respect English, but I love history.”
In Love’s classroom, stories of the American experience came to life through the unique activities she designed. In U.S. history classes, students divided into camps and fought the Civil War, with wads of paper flying across the room in place of cannon balls, each volley accompanied by a fact that gave the weapon credence.
For her advanced placement class, Love created a scavenger hunt, sending her students throughout the school in search of obscure pieces of history.
Behind each activity, however, there was education. Each moment of fun and entertainment was built on a solid foundation of facts. At every turn, Love challenged her students to think about history and to analyze its meaning, not to simply memorize a time line of meaningless dates or the names and faces of famous men and women.
And behind it all was always the relationship Love forged with her students. One built out of mutual respect, both demanded and earned.
“I try to push each of the kids I care about to be great — to reach their potential and to realize they are a whole lot more than a cutesy answer,” Love said. “I start every year with John Adams’ quote, ‘Let us dare to think, speak, read and write.’ And I think that is my job, to push them to do that.
“I also think it is my job, and their duty as citizens, to know their country and to hold them accountable to that.”
Additionally, Love feels a responsibility to teach all parts of American history, not simply the heroic moments or the scenes that fit nicely in a textbook.
“There have been times in history when we lost perspective and when we lost who we are,” she said. “I think it is important to understand that we are a quilt and our history was made by all Americans, not just Americans that have been treated well, and all moments, not just the good ones. That is why I teach the whole history.”
Love’s students have always appreciated her hands-on and direct approach to teaching. The youths who fill her classroom know they are getting her best, and that knowledge inspires them to return the favor.
“She is dedicated, really, really dedicated,” said M-CHS senior Devynn Nutt. “She will give up her planning period for her students. She will work with you. I am going to college to be a history teacher because of her. She influences the way you view a subject, and I want to be able to do that.”
Senior Mack Carter agreed.
“She has definitely mattered in my education,” said Carter, who was accepted as a cadet at the U.S. Military Academy. “She has really been an inspiration to me, and her teaching was a big part of my choice to go to West Point.”
Both Nutt and Carter said Love’s comprehensive approach to the study of history is important for students.
“It is a lot easier to support and stand for something when you can justify why it exists, and you really need the whole truth for that,” Carter said.
As retirement begins for Love, she hopes the stories she told and the lessons taught in her classroom will continue to resonate in the lives of her students.
“I would like them to see the world and broaden themselves,” Love said.
Though goodbyes are always hard, Love said it was her goal to end the year strong, the same way in which she began.
“I told myself at the beginning of this year that I’m going to end well,” she said, fighting back tears. “I started by trying to do my best and working hard. I’m going to end that way. I’m treating it like one more school year.”
One more year, one more lesson, one more story. If only there could be one more.
Reach Kimberly Benedict at kimberlyb@cortezjournal.com.