GREENBRIER — As a newspaper photographer in New York City for 20 years, Tom Kitts helped document history, including the terrorist attacks of 9/11.
Now he’s teaching fourth-graders because he wants to have an impact on the future.
The Springhill Elementary School teacher was chosen in June as the Greenbrier School District Teacher of the Year.
“At 63, I think, here’s one for the seniors,” Kitts said. “I think it’s based on probably what I’ve done, my body of work.”
He has taught in the district for 13 years and was first selected as Springhill Elementary School Teacher of the Year.
“This is kind of a second career for me,” Kitts said.
A native of Joplin, Missouri, he has a brother, Dale Kitts, who lives in Joplin and a sister, Cathy Jolly, who lives in Greenbrier. Tom Kitts followed in her footsteps and attended the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville.
He majored in English literature with a minor in art and photography, and he became an award-winning photographer.
His description is more self-deprecating: “I was nominated for some awards and won some here and there,” he said.
Kitts lived in New York City and was a photographer for New York Newsday and for The Star-Ledger in Newark, New Jersey.
“What it afforded me to do was, I felt like I was always a tourist, even though I lived there for 20 years,” he said. “Because I was a member of the press, I had access to all kinds of events, besides news. … Whether it was sports, if I was on a sports rotation, it gave me access.
“To me, after you live there for a long time, and I had a lot of friends there, it’s kind of your hometown in a way because you’ve walked those streets everywhere, and you’re very familiar with the city, and as a member of the press there,” he got to know the history of the city.
Kitts was there during 9/11 and took photos because it was “all hands on deck.”
But his most vivid memory about the day terrorists crashed two planes into the Twin Towers is more personal.
“My best friend’s brother-in law happened to be in World Trade
Center Tower No. 2 that day, and I knew him, too,” Kitts said. We spent the next several days trying to find him. We were going hospital to hospital. On the outside of the hospitals, they had written down the name of everyone who was there. We’d go and look for his name. Of course, we never found him.”
The assignment that sticks out in his mind was one in Colombia, South America, on Christmas.
“The assignment wasn’t so great. The assignment was about a plane crash,” he said. “That was a little difficult because we had to hike to the top of this mountain. We covered our story, but we had to find a way to get to the nearest town,” he said. They got a ride from local people. “We were in the back of a pickup, and we celebrated Christmas on the side of the road on the way back and had a fish cookout.”
It was the events of 9/11, though, that changed Kitts’ priorities, as with so many people, he said.
“After that, I thought, I’m getting a little older. … I always wanted to try teaching. Being a newspaper photographer is pretty physical, and I was kind of wanting to get off the street. It was a good time to stop,” he said.
He was certified to teach in New York and New Jersey, but he couldn’t find a job.
“That was a time when there was a glut of teachers,” he said.
His sister in Greenbrier invited him to come stay with her and look for a job.
“She said, ‘You won’t get a job around here, but you can live here until you find a job,’” he said. “When I was in New Jersey and New York, I started substituting, and I found out I really like that fourth-grade age — 9, 10 years old — and I just love it.
“I was lucky enough to get that job in Greenbrier, and Sue Tilley was my assistant principal for years. She was instrumental in hiring me. She said, ‘Listen, we went out on a limb to hire you, and I sawed the limb off, so do a good job,’” he recalled. Tilley is now retired.
Even though Kitts had grown up in Missouri, he’d been in the big city for 20 years before being thrust into small-town America again when he moved to Greenbrier.
“I had to get used to people being nice to me for no reason,” he said.
He was Springhill Elementary School’s representative for Teacher of the Year, and on the last day of school, Greenbrier Superintendent Scott Spainhour came to visit Kitts with two other administrators.
“They brought me a little gift basket, and I thought, ‘Oh, that’s nice. They’re going school to school to give teachers gifts,’” Kitts said.
Spainhour mentioned something to Kitts about a packet of information, and Kitts asked Spainhour what he was talking about.
“He said for District Teacher of the Year. I was supposed to know that balloons and a gift basket meant Teacher of the Year,” Kitts said.
Although Kitts was surprised, his principal was not.
Springhill Elementary School Principal Stephanie Worthey said Kitts is “just the perfect pick for our building.”
The elementary school has been open for one academic year.
“He embedded himself across the entire school,” she said. “The most precious thing for me to observe, at recess time, when he could be working on his lesson plans, … he’s outside at recess with the other grade levels.”
After school, she said Kitts voluntarily helps with bus duty and other needs, such as “interacting with the kindergarten kids, helping them adjust.”
“He’s so selfless. He truly, truly wants to make a difference for kids, and that’s the only reason he’s here,” Worthey said. “He never misses, and he is here for the kids. And I think that was the beautiful thing to watch all year long — his passion for reaching kids and making a difference for them.”
Kitts said he is especially pleased with the Teacher of the Year honor because he hopes it helps further his dream to start an after-school and summer music program. He and Worthey are building the program from the ground up.
Worthey said the school has a Very Important Panther after-school program for fifth-graders, and she would like it to evolve. She asked Kitts to help her come up with a plan.
“We’re working on it so we can present it,” Worthey said.
Although not yet approved, the program would offer students music three days a week after school.
“I am involved with that; I’m the instigator,” Kitts said.
“We have the right person to do it, our music teacher at Springhill, Justin Legris. He’s 28, energetic, he plays four or five instruments, and he wants to do it. I’ve been working on him for a year. We want to have a music after-school program and wrap an academic program into that. Then, hopefully, it’ll roll into a summer program,” Kitts said.
Kitts’ experience with music is through his wife, Lorraine Duso Kitts, professor of double reeds at the University of Central Arkansas in Conway.
He accompanies her to Maine each summer, where she teaches oboe at the New England Music Camp, and he works as an administrative assistant for the camp.
That’s the role he said he would play in the after-school music program, too.
“The goal is, we have certain students who are chosen who need support,” he said. “My goal for this program is it won’t so much be chosen students, but after they get instruments in their hands and other kids see it, other kids will want to join. Once we get it popularized, we want to roll it into a summer program.”
The students won’t have to have their own instruments; Legris has purchased 20 acoustic guitars.
If the program is approved, “we’re going to start with that … and expand, hopefully, to string and percussion,” Kitts said.
“There are a lot of kids in Greenbrier who need somewhere to go during the summer. It’s going to be like camp with all kinds of activities wrapped around music and academics,” Kitts said.
He’s thinking about the future because at 63, he doesn’t plan to stay in the classroom forever.
“I want to stay with the school district, get out of the classroom and supervise this summer program. That’s my goal because I don’t want to retire,” Kitts said.
He’s got a stake in the future; they’re called his students.
Senior writer Tammy Keith can be reached at (501) 327-0370 or tkeith@arkansasonline.com.