From stay-at-home mom to kindergarten teacher

By Will Stewart / Staff Reporter for the Southern Standard

CANTRELL

When West Elementary teacher Linda Cantrell started teaching, typical kindergarten curriculum included things like finger painting, puzzles and pasting colored paper. Those activities don’t happen much these days, she said.

“Kindergarten’s not the same as it used to be. We used to do activities that developed language and fine motor skills. It’s so academically inclined today,” said Cantrell, adding she understands the change, but wonders if it was the right way to go with the youngest of students.

Cantrell said her teaching career, which began close to 20 years ago, is her third career. Originally from a small town in Kentucky, she moved to Nashville after high school and soon found a job as a secretary. After eight years on the job, she and husband Jack, a McMinnville native she met in Nashville, moved to Warren County where they had their children.

She spent 10 years as a stay-at-home mom before heading back to school to earn her degree to become a teacher, a job she said she had always wanted to do. She soon graduated from Tennessee Tech with a bachelor’s degree in early childhood education.

Her first teaching job came as a fifth-grade teacher at North Elementary School. After a year there, however, she was transferred to Viola Elementary School, where she taught kindergarten and kindergarten/first grade split classes.

In addition to her teaching duties at Viola, she also spent a number of years as that school’s assistant principal, as well as one year as principal. And unlike most other schools, at Viola, the principal was also a teacher. “You had a double job there. It was hard to do justice to either one because you were spread pretty thin,” she said.

With the closing of Viola’s school, Cantrell was transferred to West Elementary, where she has remained as a kindergarten teacher ever since.

Asked what advice she would give parents to best prepare their children for success in school, she said they should identify objects to their children and should read to them at least once a day. Limiting children’s’ time watching TV and on the computer is also helpful. Perhaps most beneficial, she said, is simple interaction between parents and their children.

When not at school, Cantrell said she enjoys spending time with her husband and family, including daughters, Millie and Emily, and grandsons, Jackson, Bracton and Benjamin.

She said she also enjoys working in her flower garden, as well as shopping for antiques and attending auctions.