Eldon Clary

RIVER VALLEY and OZARK AREA — When Eldon Clary decided to become a teacher, he had something more in mind than grading tests. He said he wanted to make a positive difference in the world.

“Students are not just test scores,” Clary said. “You have to treat them as individuals and with respect. If you give respect, you get respect.”

Clary will retire on June 30 after a 45-year career at Arkansas Tech University in Russellville, where he most recently served as dean of the College of Education. The former high school chemistry teacher said he has tried to apply lessons learned during his teaching experience to his administrative duties at Arkansas Tech.

He came to Russellville in 1967 after teaching in McKinney, Texas. He was born in 1940 in Mineral Wells, Texas, to Eldon and Chlodell Clary. His father worked at General Dynamics in Weatherford, Texas, and his mother was a sewing-room supervisor. Though neither of his parents graduated from college, Clary said he never doubted that he would attend college.

“I never heard ‘if you go to college’ from my parents,” Clary said. “I went to school with a lot of kids who never graduated from high school, but both my mother and father did. There was always the expectation that I would go to college. It was always ‘when’ and ‘where.’”

The family moved to the rural town of Cool, Texas, and Clary attended school in Millsap, Texas.

“We were a small school,” he said, “too small for football, but we had track, basketball and baseball. I did a little catching for the baseball team.”

He said his favorite teacher, Sue Gilliand, taught English, which was not his favorite subject.

“I liked math and science,” Clary said, “but I liked her style. She pushed us - not unreasonably, but she pushed us to do better. She wouldn’t let us be satisfied.”

His youth in rural Texas was filled with ballgames, church and movies. Clary said he never thought about a career until he started college at Weatherford Junior College in 1960.

“I thought teaching was a way to make the world a better place,” Clary said. “Good teachers change kids’ lives.”

Clary met his wife, Juanita, while registering new students at the junior college. “I was looking for cute girls,” he said with a smile, “and she was one.”

The couple married in 1962.

He received a bachelor’s degree in secondary education from the University of North Texas in Denton in 1962, and in 1964 earned a master’s degree in guidance and counseling from the same university. He received a doctorate in secondary education in 1968 from UNT. He began teaching chemistry, physics and algebra at McKinney High School in 1962.

“It was always a challenge,” Clary said of teaching high school students, “but I had very bright students - they were well-behaved, and they tried. They weren’t nearly as much of a challenge as some of the other teachers’ students.”

Clary said he enjoyed teaching high school because he got to know the students. He remembered one of his favorite students and one of his greatest disappointments.

“I had one boy who was very smart and a good athlete,” Clary said. “He was also my biggest disappointment. He got a football scholarship to Baylor University, but he got in trouble and got suspended. He was a ‘can’t miss person,’ but he really missed.

“Then there was a girl who, just in terms of intelligence, was the smartest person I’ve ever seen. I never in all my life saw anybody as intellectually quick as she was.”

Clary accepted a position as assistant professor of secondary education at Arkansas Tech. One of the biggest differences between north Texas and Arkansas, he said, was the weather.

“It seemed like it rained every day in Arkansas,” Clary said with a laugh. “Back then, Russellville was about the same size as McKinney, so there wasn’t much of an adjustment there.”

Teaching college students, however, did require some adjustment.

“It’s a good bit different than teaching high school,” Clary said. “You don’t have the same relationships with the students. In high school, you see the kids every day. In college, it’s not the same - you see them for only an hour a few days a week, and they’re gone.”

As Clary took on greater administrative duties within the education department - rising over the years to head of the department, director of teacher education and dean of graduate studies - he continued teaching part time.

“We were doing the best we could preparing people to be [public-school] teachers,” he said.

Clary said the program focused on giving student teachers the academic background they needed to teach a subject, and also provided practical experience.

“You have to have good people skills to be a teacher,” he said. “You have to have a knowledge and understanding of working with children.”

Teachers also need a sense of “fairness or justice,’ he said. “You have to have the ability to treat children fairly. Kids respond to teachers they see as being fair. It’s OK if a teacher is hard, but is the teacher being fair?”

Clary said students also want to see the purpose in what they are asked to do in the classroom.

“In the adult world, you don’t ask the boss, ‘Why am I doing this?’ But students do ask that. They want to know how and when they’re going to use something. A teacher needs to be prepared to answer that question - either they are going to need it later in the school year, or they will need it for college,” he said.

Of the many changes that Clary has seen over the years, technology is by far the biggest.

“When I started here, we had a chalkboard and a piece of chalk,” he said. Keeping pace with technological changes, he said, “is part of the cost of going to college. You have to meet the expectations of students and parents. Those things don’t come cheap.”

He said people also value education differently.

“For a long time, it was understood that an education was valuable in and of itself,” he said. “It was a means of helping you appreciate your life. Now, people feel that if they can’t use it to make money, what good is it?”

Though college graduates have found a shrinking job market in the past few years, Clary said there is a smaller percentage of unemployment among those with degrees.

Anyone considering going into teaching should consider two questions, he said. “The first is, what do you want to teach? For math, science, special education and foreign language, there is a better market. Also, where are you willing to go to teach? If you want to stay in Russellville, for example, all of your life, and be a teacher, it might not happen. You have to go where the jobs are.”

As for his retirement, Clary said he has no real plans, other than to do “just whatever I wake up in the morning wanting to do.”

Staff writer Daniel A. Marsh can be reached at (501) 399-3688 or dmarsh@arkansasonline.com.