Beloved English teacher will leave to become a librarian in West Seattle school district on January 3. In this first-person story, managing editor Anne Kehl interviews Carlson up-close and personal about her career at Vashon, the dramatic life experiences gained along the way, and the wisdom gathered during her teaching career on Vashon
Anne Kehl, Managing Editor
It’s September 2013, a cold fall morning, and I’m heading to my freshman English class. I hear the pop song “Love Story” by Taylor Swift playing from a nearby classroom as I step toward my destination in the A-building.
That’s when I catch the first glimpse of my new Freshman English teacher.
Colleen Carlson — sporting a yellow, plaid, knee-length skirt and kitten heels — successfully performs several cartwheels outside her classroom door. I stop and stare. Then scared, and a little bit excited, I walk past her into the classroom, just as the late bell rings for first period.
Most people meet their favorite teacher later in high school during an advanced history class, or by really bonding over a difficult math course.
Mine, however, I met my first day of high school.
These past few years have been devastating for staff. In my high school career alone, we have lost four longtime, legendary teachers: Marcella Murphy, Elisabeth Jellison, Nathan Schreiber, and Martha Woodard.
Carlson is about to be the fifth.
When I learned that this year, Carlson is going to terminate her contract early to pursue librarianship in West Seattle, I didn’t know what to think. At first, I felt a deep sense of melancholy, first for myself, because I was supposed to have her next semester in Women’s Voices, but then for the generations to come after me.
No more classes would experience Carlson’s breathtaking love of the English language, or her sassy citations of all things Romeo and Juliet.
This is Carlson’s eighteenth year teaching at the high school. To put that in perspective, that’s a little longer than I’ve been alive. She has been taking librarian classes in the midst of her teaching career, and is ready to move on with her life and chase the library instead of the classroom. However, she will continue to teach wherever she is.
“The great thing about a more progression approach to [being a] librarian, often called teacher librarians, is that there’s a lot of teaching that librarians do,” said Carlson. “It isn’t just checking books in and out or just sort of the classic support reading. There is a really important informational and literacy component to teaching that.”
Carlson went to college for less than a year after high school before she fell in love with her husband and dropped out to start a family. She had four kids by the time she turned 29, and spent those years from after high school until she turned 37, raising those kids.
When Carlson’s son, Noah, was in middle school, tragedy struck.
“My oldest son was diagnosed with cancer, leukemia, when he was 13, between seventh and eighth grade,” she said. “He was put in a high-risk category and given a poor prognosis for survival.”
Bearing a brave face, she looked at me, then glanced back down at her hand, spinning her wedding ring around her finger.
“It was a wrenching experience for our family. It was as if, life holds you by a silver thread, and then it lets go. You drop.”
Carlson took this unspeakable hit to her family. Eventually, her son recovered, and the cancer went into remission, but the impact of that hit stayed with her. Nevertheless, she turned it into something positive.
“Thinking about just what life was about… he was doing well, and I just took it as a sign that I should think about more of my life expression, and he was expressing his life wonderfully so…. Life, you know, you go along and you wake up and keep going, and you have experiences like that, and you get hit upside the head, and you go ‘Well, what else is there?’ There was more out there.”
She decided to seek a career in teaching, something that, at the time, was a big part of her life and has always impacted her in big ways.
“Being in the classroom was an extension of [my life at home] with a lot of kids and having lived on the island for a long time. My two younger kids were here as students, so when I got this position, I was working with kids I had known since they were babies, and that was a really enriching experience.”
After 18 years of teaching though, she’s ready for a new chapter in her life. Carlson’s mother, age 92, recently died, and she expressed how appreciative she was that she had the opportunity to rebuild her career in the way that her mother never got to.
“She lived a fine life, but [my mother] was a woman of her time,” said Carlson. “She had been a registered nurse and worked for just a little bit but then did the stay-at-home-mom ‘50s and ‘60s thing, and never strived to recapture that life fulfillment part.
“I’ve been able to do that. I had my stay-at-home mom part of my life, and that was such a pleasure, and I really value all the years I had with my kids when they were growing up, but then I got to reinvent myself into this position, and now this move into being a teacher librarian is a very similar move.
“I get to reinvent myself,” she said, again, as if to reinforce the point.
While Carlson is looking forward to a fresh phase to move on to, she will always look back to her humble beginnings. With tears in her eyes and a shaky voice, she told me how honored she felt to work with such wonderful people every day.
“My relationships with my colleagues, I will miss terribly,” said Carlson, “because I just work with the greatest people. People that used to work here are [also] fabulous. I think you get that in a small community. I’ve lived here for a long time, my kids all went to school here, and I think there’s a depth of understanding that you get in a community, and I’m sure that I will miss that.”
I could share countless reasons why I am impressed by this mythical, warm-hearted mentor, but my biggest inspiration from Ms. Carlson is that of optimism. I’ve never walked by her classroom without getting a glimpse of her infectious smile, something that no shiny new stand-in could ever replace.
“I’m [a] super optimist,” she said. “I always see the storm clouds, but you know, there is always a silver lining there somewhere. That is just a condition, I guess.”
When I think back to those first days of high school with Carlson, I remember being especially affected by her ability to take every complication in stride. When a young student in my class popped a zit on to his worksheet, and then proceeded to storm out of the classroom — even then, she managed to keep a smile on her face and diffuse the situation with an uncomfortable grin.
Today, she still holds that same comical comfort that is one of her defining traits. When I asked her what she hopes students get from her class that impacts them the most, or helps them prosper later in life, she gave me a trademark smirk, and a cheeky “Oh, wow!”
Carlson is one of those rare people, not to mention teachers, who can successfully balance wisdom, sobriety, and humor in a way that is completely refreshing. Experiencing her classroom as a freshman has been an extraordinary privilege.
The high school loses a dear friend with Ms. Carlson. I wish her good luck in her new adventure, and I’m sure she’ll succeeds as a librarian. But it was Carlson herself who put it best.
“Life is all about change…. If you stop changing, you kind of stop growing.”