MORAN — Ken McWhirter’s first day as a teacher taught him two important lessons: how to adapt to each student’s needs and how to meet unexpected challenges.
Throughout his career — and especially, the past two years — those lessons would prove invaluable.
But as a brand-new sixth-grade teacher starting mid-way through the school year in 1976 in Larned, McWhirter entered a math classroom where every student was on a different page.
They were practicing individualized learning, a concept that was ahead of its time but seems quite familiar in the modern education era.
It certainly wasn’t familiar to McWhirter, who had always been taught that a class learned each concept together. He adapted to the new process, even though it meant teaching a concept to the class as a whole, and then teaching it again and again to students individually when they were ready.
“And, boy, it took a lot of work to keep up with that,” McWhirter recalled.
“It made me appreciate the different ways you can teach kids, and how you can be challenged and adapt to something that’s totally different.”
Perhaps it’s appropriate, then, that McWhirter, who retires at the end of this month as Marmaton Valley’s superintendent, is ending his career much the same way it began, by adapting to something totally different.
The coronavirus pandemic closed school buildings in March and forced teachers and administrators into a new type of teaching conducted mostly online.
Teachers needed to know the curriculum, McWhirter said, in order to construct a virtual lesson and teach via Zoom meetings.
“They made the adjustment really well. They just jumped on and took over the technology,” he said.
The district continued to offer a meals program, with lunch and breakfast for everyone from age 1 through 18. Students who lived in town came to pick up meals at the school. Teachers took turns helping deliver meals to those in rural areas.
“I think it really benefited them to see where the kids live and how they live. When you learn that much about students and get to know them, it helps teach them,” McWhirter said.
Adapting to the new experience will help the teachers, McWhirter predicted, just as his first day on the job helped shape the teacher and administrator he became.
“It will change the way they teach,” he said. “It will be interesting the next few years to see how much that change in the style of teaching will affect them once they get back into their classrooms.”
GROWING UP on a small farm at the foothills of the Allegheny Mountains in Pennsylvania, McWhirter wasn’t sure of his career path.
