Some people might think Susan Humphries of Hot Springs is very old school. As director of National League of Junior Cotillions chapters throughout the Tri-Lakes Edition coverage area, and also in Conway and Texarkana, she teaches manners to children.
Yet when you listen to her talk about her classes and her students, you get a very different picture. Humphries is a life-skills coach, who will spend two years with 11-, 12- and 13-year-olds empowering them with information they will carry with them as they grow older.
“I tell them that if they don’t use what I teach them by the time they are 21, they should call me,” she said.
Yes, the classes include using the right fork at a formal dinner, and ballroom dancing, but those seemingly old-fashioned skills still carry lessons that help children grow and mature, and provide tools that will aid them for years to come.
“The National League of Junior Cotillions has a goal of teaching our students to act and learn with honor, dignity and respect for themselves and others,” Humphries said. “If we were all kind to each other, what would the world be like?”
And while some of the lessons come from old traditions, Humphries said he believes they are just as relevant for today and in the future, and they are always being updated.
“This year we have changed how we teach interviewing skills,” she said. “My high school assistants play out examples of good job interviews, where [applicants] dress neatly and seriously, place their resumes into the hands of the interviewer and are focused on the questions they are given and the answers they give.
“Then there are the classic bad interviews with sloppy, inappropriate dress, and causal and almost unfocused responses.”
Her assistants are students in the higher grades of high school who took her classes when they were in the fifth and sixth grades. They have already learned the value of the things they learned in cotillion.
“One of my assistants told the students to hang on to their cotillion booklets. ‘You will want to go over the interviewing skills again when you try to get into college,’ the assistant said. ‘I did and used those things I had learned, and they helped me get into Yale.’”
Humphries said another former student, now in college, told her he was glad he was sent to cotillion.
“All I learned at cotillion I use every day at the Air Force Academy,” he said.
“They call it military protocol,” she said.
“I have all the positive part of being a school teacher,” Humphries said, “without the negative things, such as grading papers and discipline.”
The lessons learned in Humphries’ classes also include the etiquette for technology and new media.
She said that as newer technology comes along, the rules can change.
“Email and texting, tweets and Facebook give young people so many opportunities to interact, but a great deal of information is exchanged, and there need to be guidelines,” Humphries said. “There is no emotional connection to be sure a joke is understood, or if something written seems too harsh.”
Questions of when emails should be used for sending out invitations are among the issues for electronic communications, along with friending and de-friending someone.
As for emailing, Humphries said a thank-you note should still be handwritten on paper and mailed.
“You are showing respect for someone who has done something for you,” she said. “It is worth the time and effort. And with more and more communications being done electronically, sending a real note is even more personal and special.”
The cotillion director actually was a school teacher for a while, although she said it was not her first choice.
“I knew that what I truly wanted to do was work as a computer engineer,” Humphries said. “Now I’ll show my age, but there was not a college degree for that at the time. So math interested me, and I majored in math and took the classes needed to become a teacher, as well.”
She taught mathematics in middle school for 11 years. Meanwhile, her husband, Patrick, was the principal of a private school in El Dorado that taught only the sixth grade.
She said she and her husband became specialists in teaching 10- and 11-year-olds.
The couple teach the classes that she refers to as dances. Her husband helps with the boys in the classes.
“He is the catalyst for the gentlemen students,” she said. “He can talk sports with them and keep up their interests. The gentlemen get into the ‘adultness’ of the role, the maturing level of the classes.”
As for the dancing, Humphries said, she tells the young males in her class to ask their mothers and grandmothers if knowing how to dance properly with a girl is a good thing.
“They get the message at home, and they come to us to learn,” she said.
Humphries taught school until her son, Ryan, was born, and she became a stay-at-home mom.
“After my son was beyond the age of junior cotillion, he moved from Cub Scouts to Boy Scouts, and I finished some work with the Junior Auxiliary. I was looking for something to do,” she said. “I read an article in the newspaper that the national cotillion organization was looking for directors.”
She inquired, and within a few weeks, she was trained and holding classes.
She is one of the leading members of the national cotillion organization. She has been a member of the National League of Junior Cotillions Advisory Board. She won numerous awards from the league, including regional and national Director of the Year awards and the league president’s Award for Excellence.
The major point of teaching the cotillion classes is the confidence the students get out of it and the lessons learned about being a good person.
“They learn respect for others, and when they put those things in practice and they see the reactions it generates, that’s when the confidence comes,” she said.
The league gives an award to chapter directors who have given lessons to more than 2,000 students. In 22 years, Humphries has had almost 10,000 students.
Those are 10,000 youngsters who have had their lives enriched and fortified with the lessons in not only manners, but in social confidence, dignity, respect and kindness.
Perhaps they need a new and bigger award for teaching 10,000 students.
Staff writer Wayne Bryan can be reached at (501) 224-4460 or at wbryan@arkansasonline.com.