Retiring Teacher Leaves Legacy of Commitment
By Barbara Ferguson
If you were asked to name a person who has had a great influence on your life making you the person you are today, who would you name?
It might be a parent, a sibling, a friend, or in all probability a teacher. This profession has the responsibility to do, as John Ruskin would write about education, “The painful, continual and difficult work to be done by kindness, by watching, by warning, by precept, and by praise, but above all … by example.”
One such remarkable teacher, Earl Snodgrass, is retiring this year from Summit School after 35 years of dedicated service. Summit School is dedicated to meeting the needs of children with learning disabilities out of the range of standard education in grades one through 12. Through a staff of compassionate educators and counselors, Summit School focuses on quality education, including academics and interpersonal skills. It now serves students from more than 20 other school districts and communities and is located in a large building, complete with swimming pool, at 611 East Main Street in East Dundee.
But this was not how it was back in 1972, when Earl Snodgrass started to teach. Summit School, the brainchild of founder, Ruth Tofanelli, was located in what Earl describes as “the cow barns over at St. Monica’s church in Carpentersville.”
He was the first male staff member and remembers the school as being “very small and very collegial with six to seven classrooms, one speech therapist and one counselor.”
Earl taught eighth grade there and physical education. He also drove the kids home and did home visits with their families. According to Ruth Tofanelli, “Earl has been one of the most outstanding teachers that I have had the privilege of calling a colleague. He began working with high school boys who were frustrated by their school failures and were striking out at a system that failed them. They were angry, rebellious and had little interest in learning, having decided that they could not learn. Earl took on the most difficult task. He not only had to teach them, but he had to reach them before learning could take place. He let them know he understood and cared. He instituted positive approaches to show the boys that they could learn.”
Earl worked on starting a work-study program, a transitional life skills program and developed outstanding summer programs, including an annual trip for the students to the Northern Minnesota Boundary Waters. There he was able to teach young men survival skills as well as how to work together.
“These students need to learn to get along socially and through these canoe adventures, they realize that they can’t do it all by themselves.”
For 22 years he has given up spending Father’s Day with his family to go backpacking and canoeing at the Boundary Waters. He takes a maximum of nine students each time and has been accompanied by fellow teachers Joel Abamonte and Larry Glowacki for support which as he says, “is very useful when dealing with hyperactive teens and tents.”
Sharon Knoff remembers that Earl was the first person that she met when she was looking for a school to help her daughter Jamie. She describes Jamie as being a severely learning disabled seventh- grader and herself as being “frazzled” after having Jamie in a variety of other schools. At Summit she immediately felt a calm and relaxing atmosphere that was also sensed by her daughter.
“Earl and the others staff were really caring and changed my daughter’s life,” she said. Jamie graduated in 1999 from Summit, has a job and is married with a 2-year-old child.
Now Earl is retiring to spend some Father’s Days with his own daughters, Robin Restrepo, who lives in Crystal Lake; Jill Snodgrass, who is studying for her doctorate in Claremont, California; or Becky Donner and her husband who live just outside Paris, France. He also hopes to indulge in a little golfing and even do some substitute teaching at Summit.
(c) 2007 Daily Herald; Arlington Heights, Ill.. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.