GRANITE FALLS — Kaitlan Howell was in the fourth grade at Monte Cristo Elementary School when she took a tumble from the monkey bars at recess. She fell onto her back, the impact softened by the wood chips, but her fright petrifying.
Fifteen years later, she still sees her uncle rushing to her side and her mother not far behind. They assured her that everything would be OK.
In a sense, they are doing the same today. All three are teachers on the same campus she once attended. She is in her first year as a full-time teacher, which can feel daunting at times.
Her mother, Debra Howell, has taught for more than 32 years in the Granite Falls School District and has been in the same classroom since Monte Cristo opened in 1995.
Kaitlan Howell’s uncle, Mike Schireman, is in his 20th year at Monte Cristo. Schireman and Debra Howell teach in adjoining multi-grade classrooms of fourth- through sixth-graders. They often share students and lesson plans, a divide-and-conquer approach to academics that plays to their strengths.
Kaitlan Howell figures she has a lot to be thankful for this holiday season: she has a teaching job in her hometown with plenty of support from loved ones.
“I’m incredibly lucky to have the family I do, especially to be able to walk down the hall and they are always there,” she said.
She also can bounce ideas off Brian Moen and Jenna Lawrence, fellow fifth-grade teachers she remembers fondly from her childhood and who are now her colleagues.
She once vowed that she would “never, ever” become a teacher. She’d spent countless hours on the campus before, during and after school while her mom worked.
“I can’t follow in my mother’s footsteps,” she would tell herself.
Nor her father’s for that matter. Steven Howell teaches science at Granite Falls High School.
Yet, in September, Kaitlan Howell was giddy as she waited for the school year to begin.
“Holy cow,” she remembers thinking. “I have my own classroom. I’m in charge of 27 living beings.”
Somewhere along the line, she realized that her parents’ profession was her calling, too. While she was student-teaching in Everett, it dawned on her how much she wanted to return to her hometown and instill in her students that they should be proud to be from Granite Falls.
It has been a rewarding and exhausting first year. Up by 5:50 a.m. To school by 7. Lesson plans. The school day. Reflecting on what went well and what did not. She thinks about individual students and how best to reach them and she seeks advice from Lawrence, Mom and Uncle Mike. Her head hits the pillow by 8:30 p.m. with ideas swirling around inside her brain.
In the back of her mind, she has a recurring thought: “I don’t know how my mom does this.”
The other day as they all waited for afternoon parent-teacher conferences, Kaitlan paid a visit to her mom’s classroom. Uncle Mike was there, too.
Debra Howell’s classroom feels like a nest. It’s an organized and comfortable clutter of curiosities gathered over decades. Photos of current and former students cover walls and fill albums. Tom Sawyer looks up from desktops. The Declaration of Independence hangs above a container of well-worn wooden yard sticks. Volumes of Shakespeare wait to be cracked with lines to be learned and scenes to be acted.
Their conversation drifts in many directions. Schireman and Kaitlan remember an awkward day when she was a student. It was the lone time he had to talk to a roomful of girls as part of a human growth and development unit. Yes, it was the dreaded birds-and-the-bees talk. Delivered by Uncle Mike.
“I could see Katie sinking in her chair,” Schireman said.
Around the table now, the trio discuss plans to visit Duane and Rosanne Schireman in Everett at Thanksgiving. Debra’s and Mike’s parents were planning to host 27 members of the family, including two of their other children, a Boeing executive and a zookeeper.
Schireman, whose wife, Allison, grew up in Granite Falls and now teaches at the middle school, tells Kaitlan about the rewards ahead: visits and wedding invitations from former students and the successes they have achieved and are eager to share.
Debra Howell wonders if she’ll get to teach Mike’s son in a few years. Carson is now in the second grade.
Kaitlan imagines that someday she will have a child of her own who will attend and come back to teach at Monte Cristo.
Her mother is thankful Kaitlan had a change of heart.
”I couldn’t be prouder than to watch her with her students,” Debra Howell said. “She absolutely beams with pride.”
Eric Stevick: 425-339-3446; stevick@heraldnet.com.
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