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Cloudy skies this morning followed by thunderstorms during the afternoon. Gusty winds and small hail are possible. High 77F. Winds WSW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 80%..
Tonight
A steady rain this evening. Showers continuing overnight. Low 57F. Winds NNE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 70%. Rainfall near a quarter of an inch.
Emma Marie Alston poses for a photo during her retirement party in September. Alston taught Alamance County children for 45 years.
Times-News
Courtesy of George Hall
Emma Marie Alston always preferred working with the youngest students.
“I want to get them while they’re young, while they’re a sponge, or as I say, their CD is blank,” she said, “and you have more you can add to it that’s good for them, to help them to learn.”
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She taught early elementary school grades in several schools, but the biggest part of Alston’s career was in pre-kindergarten, first as a teacher and then she ran the program at Alamance-Burlington Schools for seven years.
As a friend put it, this would put her in all those classrooms where she could touch more children and families.
"I thought I was going to retire in the classroom, but then God had other ideas,” she said.
After 45 years, nearly all of them in Alamance County, the 67-year-old retired in September. She hadn’t really wanted to. Even COVID-19 and all that went with it didn’t put her off, but a stroke affected her vision making meetings and classes over Zoom more than her eyes could handle.
As her recovery proceeds, she looks forward to volunteering with children again.
Vision has always been important to Alston. Like a lot of people, reading opened up the world for her as a little girl, bringing her knowledge and taking her on adventures. It’s something she likes to share.
“I enjoyed helping children have a healthy imagination,” she said, “which also helps them to be creative and to think critically.”
Pre-K is vital to get children ready for elementary school, Alston said. She believes in it and has beliefs about it. For one, pre-k should be universal like kindergarten, not just restricted to the poor. But it’s also important they learn at their own pace at that age.
“You know, sometimes I think we've done them a disservice when we don't allow children to think,” she said, “when we tell them what to think.”
She likes to guide them through the thought process of learning, teaching them to find their own ways to figure things out and making them feel capable even when they aren’t as far along as others or don’t have the same advantages.
“You want them to feel like that when they come up to you, and they say, ‘Look what I did,’ and you go, ‘I like that. Now, what else do you think you could add to that?’” Alston said.
It’s an approach she also liked to take with older students in Elon University’s tutorial program, the It Takes a Village Project, and in the literacy and GED classes for adults she taught at Alamance Community College for 30 years.
Alston grew up in Burlington, went to Burlington City Schools back when there wasn’t kindergarten, she said. In 1976 she graduated from Elon College and started teaching at Elon Elementary School. She only left the area for about a year in the 1980s when her husband, Charles, was pastor at Baptist Grove Church in Raleigh.
Her pre-k career started after that at Pleasant Grove Elementary School in the late 1980s when the program was called Even Start. The names change as the grant programs change, Alston said, but the aim is generally to improve literacy and help children do better in school than their parents. In those days there were jobs, but people knew change was coming. Even Start, she said, was to break the cycle of teenagers dropping out to work in the mills.
After her marriage and raising four children, teaching might be one of the biggest parts of Alston’s adult life, but it wasn’t her first choice. She considered teaching when she was growing up, but dreamt of becoming an opera singer or a surgeon. She sang with the concert choir and girls chorus at Williams High School and with New Directions, an interdenominational ministry from 1969 until the 1980s. She even started college in pre-med at St. Augustine’s University in Raleigh. When her father became ill, Alston moved back home where she could help care for him and finished college studying early childhood education.
“Teaching was my third choice,” she said, “but I ended up being a teacher and have enjoyed it for 45 years.”
Isaac Groves is the Alamance County government watchdog reporter for the Times-News and the USA Today Network. Call or text 919-998-8039 with tips and comments or follow him on Twitter @TNIGroves.
