The Lincoln Public Schools retirees: Becky Eston, Bruce Gullotti, Donna Lubin, Phyllis Custance, Susan Totten, and Kathleen Xenakis (seated).
By Alice Waugh
The Lincoln Public Schools said farewell to five teachers and other staff members who officially retired as of last week: administrative secretary Phyllis Custance of Hanscom Middle School; art teacher Donna Lubin of Hanscom Primary School; and kindergarten teacher Rebekah Eston Salemi, eighth-grade math teacher Susan Totten, custodian Bruce Gullotti, and instructional assistant Kathleen Xenakis of the Lincoln School. Below are a few reminiscences (Xenakis and Custance could not be reached for comment).
Phyllis Custance
A Lincoln resident who grew up and raised her own children in town, Custance worked in the Lincoln school system for an impressive 47 years, as Hanscom Middle School Principal Erich Ledebuhr explained at a recent School Committee meeting where members honored the retirees. She went to school in the little red schoolhouse that’s now the Masonic Lodge on Lincoln Road, then the Center School (now the town office building) for two years, and finally the new Smith School, where she was a member of the first class to graduate from that school.
Custance wore many hats in the Lincoln schools including bus monitor, teacher aide, Resource Room coordinator, and administrative secretary (the last starting in 1998). “Phyllis has been one of my first lines of defense. She has been a supporter, cheerleader, and sounding board, and has been there to offer advice or critique when needed… she has been a rock of support throughout my tenure, ” Ledebuhr said. She also built connections to many students over the years; “of course, there are a few she gets to know really well, as it seems she writes a late pass for them every day,” he joked.
Bruce Gullotti
A self-described jack of all trades (carpenter, painter, handyman., etc.), Gullotti started working in Lincoln 19 years ago and said simply, “I like helping people.” One of the ways he’s helped over the years is using his talent for finding lost belongings at the school, including a diamond stud earring and even a hearing aid piece (“eight teachers were on the playground looking but I found it inside five minutes,” he said proudly).
Gullotti will also be remembered for the miniature Zen gardens he made and gave away to students and others, including Superintendent of Schools Becky McFall (“When she first came here, I made one for her because I knew it would be a stressful job,” he said). When giving the garden to kids, he told them they were a free gift but asked them to pay it forward.
“It’s been a great place to work. A lot of people just went out of their way to be nice,” he said. “If you want to teach your children anything at all, you teach them a work ethic and love. Everything else seems to fall in place.”
Donna Lubin
Donna Lubin with a montage of her #projecthappyway drawings.
Lubin taught for 32 years at Hanscom Primary School, where the student turnover rate is very high because of parents’ military assignments — some kids are there for only a few months. “I love being their teacher at Hanscom because I’ve been able to share art with thousands of children and their families — much more so than most teachers,” she said.
Not surprisingly, one of the things Lubin hopes to pursue in retirement is more artwork, including her drawings for #projecthappyway. On every single day in 2017, she did a freehand Sharpie drawing with the word “happy” in it. “I realized I needed to spread the happy,” she said. “Even when you’re really busy, make a happy picture.”
Becky Eston Salemi
Eston has been a kindergarten teacher for all but a few of the 39 years she’s worked in Lincoln. including 25 years in the same classroom. She’ll remember class walks to the deCordova Museum along the boardwalk fellow teacher Terry Green helped create, the Pinewood Derby (a race with wooden cars the kids built themselves), the Halloween costume parades and haunted house, “and many happy memories of young children just growing in front of my eyes,” said Eston, who will be the parade marshal at next next month’s July 4 parade..
Longtime kindergarten teacher Becky Eston (in front of tree) with students and parents who gathered last week to give her an affectionate sendoff.
Back in the early days of her career, kindergarten had a phase-in schedule starting with just five half-days a week for the first half of the school year, and computers in the classroom were unheard-of until fellow teacher Betty Bjork introduced a single Radio Shack TRS-80 for the entire school. In the early days, she recalled, kids could learn programming basics with Logo; ironically, this year kindergarteners year used screen-free coding materials provided through a Lincoln School Foundation grant to support the teaching of computational thinking.
“Because the technology is so much more viable, we can do so much more. It’s amazing to see what they can do” with computers, Eston said. “But at the heart of it, my hope is to keep kindergarten as a place where children play as they learn.”
Susan Totten
“Most of all, I’ve loved the young people I’ve worked with,” said Totten, who began her Lincoln teaching career in 1998. “I also love the craft of teaching, of working and watching the light on the faces of the students in front of me. As a teacher, one has to have a love of children, and the eighth-grade adolescents I’ve worked with have been wonderful. Lincoln and Boston students are fortunate here in Lincoln to be well supported, both by their families and the school community.”
Thanks for the write up Alice