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Tuesday July 21, 2015 Edition
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All About The Children
Sharing Memories With Kathy Douglas

The Ferrisburgh Central School Canada Trip always has great assistance from parents and community members: ( L-R) P. Stapleford, J. Weber, B. Clark, T. Kessler, S. Briylea, G. Norman, K. Douglas, A. Kohn)
photo by Photo Provided
The Ferrisburgh Central School Canada Trip always has great assistance from parents and community members: ( L-R) P. Stapleford, J. Weber, B. Clark, T. Kessler, S. Briylea, G. Norman, K. Douglas, A. Kohn)
The whole sixth grade went and loved the experience!
photo by Photo Provided
The whole sixth grade went and loved the experience!

Tuesday July 21, 2015

By Cookie Steponaitis

Kathy Senesac Douglas was in high school when she knew she had found her calling after helping the nuns teach religion class. Kathy idolized Sister Ursula and decided to be like her in how she valued children and treated them as if they were some of God’s most important gifts. Forty-eight years in the classroom and over eight thousand students later, Kathy Douglas still feels it is all about the children. While she officially stepped down from classroom teaching this June, retirement for Kathy looks like some priorities have never shifted. She will still spearhead the Canada Trip for Ferrisburgh sixth graders, help foster and mentor any child wanting to participate in Vermont History Day and find time to babysit some of her grandchildren. Kathy looks at life to this day through the lens of her children, grandchildren and children in her charge.
    Kathy was born in Addison on the Senesac Farm and for the first two years of her life was raised on her Grandfather Jacques’s farm, managed by Kathy's dad. The Senesac’s were one of the founding families to settle the valley from Canada and Grandpa Jacques owned many acres of land and helped many families coming from Canada to get settled  in Addison County. Whether it was a small loan to get them started or a lease of land, Jacques Senesac was one for whom people were a total commitment; a trait that was passed down to granddaughter Kathy.
    Kathy lived in Burlington and Waterbury for part of her schooling, returned to the area and graduated as part of the first class of the new high school which opened in the fall of 1959 and graduated sixty three seniors in the summer of 1960.  While attending Trinity College in Burlington she was offered the opportunity to teach at St. Anthony’s and left college to take the position.  She married and moved to Virginia where she taught and returned to the area with her young family but first had to finish her Bachelor’s Degree before she could take a position in the local school system.  It was the summer of 1973 when Kathy Douglas signed her name on the dotted line and joined the staff at Ferrisburgh Central School remaining there until her retirement in 2015, impacting three generations of Vermonters.
    During her tenure at Ferrisburgh Central School Douglas taught many different combinations of classrooms, but always as Kathy remarked, “The children wanted to learn and that has never changed.” Teaching third grade, a third-fourth grade, fourth grade, a fifth-six grade combination and finally sixth grade, Douglas was known by all for her passion for travel, hands on learning and providing children with the skill set they needed to be life long learners.
    “I always tried to begin with the relationship with the child,” recollected Douglas. “From that beginning we would work together and help them organize, focus and learn.” It would seem impossible to pick one event to showcase from her memory with almost fifty years of memories to draw from, but Douglas quickly grinned and sitting forward in her chair related the story of the Louisiana pen pals. “We had pen pals in Louisiana,” explained Douglas, “through the Scholastic Magazine and the children had never seen snow. They wanted to come up and while many people thought we were a bit out of our minds we decided to make that work.”
    Deciding on a three day two night visit, Douglas moved ahead and linked with WCAX Channel 3 to film the visit, organized teachers to house the children, called local food and restaurants to secure the meals needed and never once looked back. “When the children arrived on Amtrak,” clarified Douglas, “the looks on the faces of our children and the looks on the faces of the children from Louisiana made it worth all the work. The excitement and smiles were amazing.” Loading the group on the bus, the two day adventure included skiing down the hill at the Lincoln Fire Station, a home cooked meal of Fresh Vermont Turkey from Kneeshaw’s farm, movies, stories and sharing. Snowed in from travel, the group actually stayed one more day and in the wee hours of the morning Douglas, all her students and some parents boarded the school bus driven by Victor Lavoie and drove the group to pick up the Amtrak Train in Albany.
    Once bitten by the travel bug, Douglas did not rest but began two other programs that have been a part of Addison County education for nearly thirty years. As one of the schools in a pilot program called Vermont/National History Day, Douglas’s students choose Vermont topics, researched, interviewed and created exhibits, skits and plays about their learning and competed at the state and national levels. She chaperoned over thirty groups to the national competition in College Park, Maryland and even enticed other teachers in the district to expand the program to the middle and high school.
    Another hallmark of the memories of her students involves the Canada Trip at the end of sixth grade. Douglas started the program out of a love of students seeing, learning and asking questions about their world and the Canadian trip is now a part of the culture of the school and parents share memories of their trip as their children pull out of the school yard headed for their own epic adventure. The trip continues to change and be refined using feedback from the children.  Douglas is not interested in spelling the word retirement and spoke with enthusiasm about her plan to spearhead the trip and work with teachers again this year adding with a grin, “I have some ideas.”
    Kathy was given advice sixty years ago by her mother to ‘Love the children and to be herself’ and is not quite sure where forty eight years went because for her it seems like just the other day it all began. “What fun,” she quipped. “And what a privilege.” Eight thousand students would agree and somewhere high above, it is definite that Sister Ursula is smiling in agreement. The Valley Voice salutes Kathy Douglas for a passion that never dimmed, a love that never wavered and a voice that still to so many children represents a time in their lives and education where they counted and empowered and supported to learn.


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