Salute to retiring educators

Lexington 1: Kindergarten teacher ready to pass on her legacy

By DEVON COPELAND - dcopeland@thestate.com

When Angela Halfacre walks out of her kindergarten classroom in June, she’ll end a 37-year teaching career that she said has brought her unending joy.

But in August, the retiring teacher will take on a new role — that of a classroom volunteer at Pleasant Hill Elementary.

That’s where her daughter Hope, who graduated from USC this year, will begin her own teaching career.

Hope, 22, said she always dreamed of becoming a teacher like her mother.

“I obviously grew up in my mother’s classroom,” she said. “I’m looking forward to continuing my mom’s legacy. ”

A self-professed lifelong learning junkie, Angela Halfacre began her career in Lexington 1 in 1971.

She’s taught first-grade students through fifth-grade students, but it was kindergarten students she said captured her heart.

“I like the fact that they are so open,” she said.

Halfacre, who’ll leave Midway Elementary in June, said she realized early in her career that she was going to have to dismiss some of the teaching theories popular at the time.

“Thinking that you could go in and teach children the same way,” she said. “I think that’s what I had to throw out the window.”

Instead she focused on hands-on activities, rewarding good behavior rather than focusing on bad and emphasizing to students that it’s all right to make mistakes.

Those methods have become increasingly important, she said, as students have become more sophisticated.

“Back in the old days I would teach colors and shapes to them,” she said. “Now most of them have gone to preschool and already learned those things.”

Halfacre said she finds herself teaching science lessons to her kindergarten classes and helping them write in journals.

“It’s amazing to see the growth that they have made,” she said. “I don’t think we realized they could do all that.”

Hope Halfacre said her mother’s approach of active learning to engage students is a philosophy she’s adopted as her own.

“That’s how I feel children learn best,” she said. “When they get that firsthand experience of feeling objects and changing objects.”

Halfacre’s other daughters also are educators.

Eldest daughter, Michelle, teaches in Lexington 2 and youngest daughter, Brittany, has just finished her sophomore year at USC.

She’s not surprised.

“I really always thought they would be teachers because I loved it so much,” Halfacre said.

It’ll be difficult, she said, to clean out the classroom she’s used for 14 years and accept that she won’t have her own group of children to teach next year.

“I’m going to miss those little faces that are so innocent and so excited about learning,” Halfacre said.

But she said she looks forward to lending her support as her daughter navigates her way through her first year as a teacher.

“Hope is way better than what I have ever been or will ever be,” she said. “I’m excited to see the awesome teacher she’s going to be.”

Reach Copeland at (803) 771-8485.