Letter to the Editor - Naber an example of what rural teachers should be

Dear editor:

I was very pleased with Ila McClenahan’s interesting account of her teachers at the one-room elementary schools across north-central Montana. She was a student at Staton Coulee School while I was a student at rural Burnham School during my lower elementary grades. Donna Van Wechel and Esther Naber were both teachers at the school I attended during different years.  Both were life-long friends. While I didn’t have Mrs. Van Wechel for a teacher, one of my lower elementary level teachers was Esther Naber.

Just as the McClenahan column notes, Mrs. Naber created a fascination with reading, literature, history and science among all her students at whatever grade level. She read various books to all her students every day she was in school.

Mrs. Naber had a serious accident early in her teen years, so she could not have children of her own, but she made up for it by treating all her students as if they were her own children.  While she taught in Havre schools for a couple of years, she much preferred the smaller enrollment of country school teaching with the mixture of students for the first to eighth grade in the same small classroom, all participating directly or indirectly with the same subject matter.

While neither of my parents attended college, Mrs. Naber, who was my father’s older sister, convinced them and me that I should go on to college and graduate school. Mrs. (Thackeray) Naber even loaned me money occasionally to cover college tuition and book expenses. She also helped me with classes and provided me with meals and a place to stay when I needed that to continue my high school and college education. I sat by her bedside the day and night of her death at the long-term care center in Havre.

Mrs. Naber’s last years of teaching before her retirement were at the Lothair rural school north of Lothair in north-central Montana. Nearly every day during long-term retirement in Havre, she was visited by one or more of her rural school students.

Mrs. Naber was like another parent for me and my brothers, and I can only wish that there were more rural school teachers like her in the remote country areas of north Montana.

Sincerely,

Bill Thackeray

Havre