Many people in their 70s might consider their age the golden years, time spent enjoying retirement with travels, hobbies and relaxation.
For Linda Cotter, 72, that is anything but the case.
The longtime teacher can be found in a historic 1865 school building, part of Columbus St. Mary School in the German Village neighborhood. Thoughts of life oceanside or lazy mornings are far from her mind. Instead, the classroom is exactly where she wants to be.
The past year was not simply another year of teaching for Cotter. The year marked her 50th consecutive as a teacher at St. Mary School.
Cotter began student teaching at the school in the winter of 1974 while completing her degree at Ohio Dominican College (now Ohio Dominican University). After receiving her diploma, she moved her tassel to the left and returned to St. Mary that fall as a fourth-grade teacher.
She has taught fourth grade at the school ever since. While, for some, that might seem unimaginable, for Cotter, it is a blessing.
“I fell in love with this place the first day I came,” she said.
Her German roots extend far beyond the German Village school.
In 1957, Cotter, then five years old, traveled by boat from her home country of Germany to the United States. The family settled in the Columbus area. She was about to begin first grade and spoke no English.
Her mother insisted that she learn the language. She refused to speak to her daughter in German except for cases of emergency. Cotter’s first-grade year was difficult because she was unable to understand English in the classroom.
“That gives me a lot of insight into my students who are ESL (English as a Second Language), and I recognize they’re probably not – if they’re speaking another language at home – going to make the same progress, because my stepdad did not speak hardly any German, and my mother spoke English, so she put her foot down the very time I stepped off the boat,” she recalled.
“She said to me, ‘We are not just on vacation; we are staying here, and you may not speak anything other than English, so you’re going to learn English.’”
Once she got through the initial difficulty, Cotter fell in love with school. She loved all of her teachers, and she noted, she can name most of them today. She recalled times that she “played school” with her two younger siblings, both born after the family’s arrival in the United States.
By the time she attended college at Ohio Dominican, majoring in education to become a teacher was a natural choice.
Her student teaching assignment at St. Mary School only confirmed that.
To this day, Cotter recalled fond memories of her cooperating teacher, Kathy McClernon, who died in 2018. The longtime diocesan teacher and principal, like Cotter, spent her career at St. Mary. The two became colleagues when Cotter started full time at St. Mary. McClernon was later Cotter’s principal.
From their earliest days together, the veteran educator largely shaped Cotter’s career.
“She was very experienced and probably had the biggest influence on me because she was very dynamic,” Cotter recalled. “She was a real character, and you know, she was very funny. The kids had a lot of respect for her. She was very firm but very fair and very open to the kids, and I always admired that.”
Cotter began her career teaching fourth through eighth grade mathematics, while McClernon taught fourth through eighth grade language arts. The school later changed and fourth graders no longer transitioned from classroom to classroom for each subject.
With the change, principal Ted Hummer at the time assigned Cotter to fourth grade only.
“He knew that I was not a middle school teacher, and he said, ‘Linda, you just need to be in this grade, so we’re going to self-contain fourth, and you’re going to teach every subject,’ and I about fell over,” she recalled.
Looking back, however, she said, it was the perfect choice.
While teaching, Cotter earned a master’s degree in early and middle childhood education with an emphasis in mathematics.
At the conclusion of her first year teaching, she converted to Catholicism. Her late husband of 49 years, Garry, whom she married her senior year at Ohio Dominican, came from a large Irish Catholic family. Cotter said she made up her mind to enter the Church at that time. Her teaching position at St. Mary confirmed her desire to be Catholic.
Cotter appreciated the school’s welcoming environment and weekly Masses, which, she said, instilled a great desire to go to Mass on Sundays.
It seemed that the school was the right place for her.
Cotter’s realization that St. Mary was special came on her first day of student teaching in ‘74. She recalled sitting at the teacher’s desk, observing, when a little girl, Lisa Dunn, walked in. The school continues a celebration in her honor.
“She had progeria (a condition causing children to age prematurely), so she was maybe 3 feet tall. She wore a wig. She looked like a walking skeleton: skin was tight on her face; she had no eyebrows, no eyelashes, no hair.
“Kids went to the back of the room, brought the unabridged dictionary, put it on the chair, picked Lisa up, sat her on the dictionary in the front row, and she giggled and smiled and was ready to go with everybody else. She was in her little uniform, and I realized, oh, she’s a student, but no one had prepared me for that.
“At that point in the diocese, we really didn’t take kids that had special needs, so I was really surprised – pleasantly surprised – because that was something that drew me to public school, but being here changed my mind completely,” Cotter said in tears. “That was really life changing.”
She is convicted that every child deserves a Catholic education.
The past school year, Cotter taught student Faustina Easterday, who was born deaf. Easterday had an interpreter in class. Cotter admires the St. Mary community for its openness to accepting children with special needs. As a universal Church, Cotter said, she believes everyone is entitled to Catholic education.
Her years of teaching came with unique needs of their own. Every day brought new challenges. Cotter noted the difficulty of time spent organizing materials and planning lessons that ultimately did not hit home with students.
The need to constantly pivot and make adjustments on the go, she said, does not change in time. She considers her first year of teaching the most difficult, but by year three, she said, she felt a sense of confidence.
A fond memory includes winning a diocesan teacher of the year award. That year, Cotter recalled feeling good about her effect as a teacher, “but most of the time, you’re just swimming against the tide a lot and trying to figure out how you can get the ideas across to everyone and not leave anybody behind.”
That challenge, she said, brings her back to the classroom every year.
“You’re never an excellent teacher,” she explained. “You’re always aware that you have more things that you can do, and it’s not a job for the faint of heart. You have to have it as a vocation, not as just a job.”
Cotter saw many teachers come and go during her 50 years. She said several began with a false idea that teaching will be easy, added with the luxury of three months off in the summertime and a smooth-running classroom. Such teachers soon realize the hard work teaching requires.
Others – teachers with families – might struggle to balance their vocation at home with their work in the classroom. For Cotter, that was not so.
Early in her marriage, she and Garry learned they were unable to have children. The initial revelation, she said, was awful.
About five years into their marriage, Garry was left disabled from a motorcycle accident. She assumed the roles of caretaker and provider. Cotter said she could then see God’s hand in it.
While the door to bearing children was closed, another was opened for spiritual motherhood.
“Although I didn’t have kids, I really had children at school, so it wasn’t a great loss for me,” Cotter said.
Surrender was another key lesson Cotter learned from her years in the classroom. Teaching ultimately taught her that she cannot change every circumstance. She considered it one of the most difficult realities to accept.
Cotter said she came to understand that she cannot change the world, only what is in her control.
“I think that’s the biggest lesson – and that you have to trust God and have faith that somehow He’s going to take care of it,” she added. “I think that’s where my faith really helps me.
“My greatest sin is trying to control everything, but my saving grace is that finally I’ll realize I can’t control this, and I’m just going to have to put it in God’s hands, and that’s a hard lesson when you’re teaching because you have so many kids with so many needs.”
Cotter especially appreciates knowing the impact she had on students. She recalled former students who returned to her classroom to share their story or offer a word of gratitude.
Particularly meaningful was the return of a former student who could best be described as a wild child.
The student had remained close with Cotter since fourth grade. She visited Cotter’s classroom later as a teenager to share news that she was pregnant.
She ultimately chose life for her child, a girl, and finished school. She went on to marry the father, become a military wife and welcome three more children. The oldest served as the flower girl at the wedding, which Cotter attended.
She considers it a student success story.
“It really makes it worthwhile to teach when you can see the longer-term result,” Cotter explained. “You don’t always get to see it.”
While no plans to retire are on the horizon, Cotter expressed hopes that someone will nudge her and let her know when it’s time if she does not recognize it. Until then, she plans to continue her journey that began 50 years ago.
“I don’t want to teach if I can’t be my best self,” she said, “but I still feel like I have a lot to offer.”