As another school year begins, three generations of educators in the Parsons community – one retired and two in the classroom – share what experiences and advice they’ve given and received over the years that helped make them the teachers they are today.  

Janice Wilkerson, a retired Parsons USD 503 teacher and considered the “elder statesman” of the family, said her teaching career was “a wonderful life.” 

“It couldn’t have been a better gift being a teacher and watching children grow and develop,” she said. 

Wilkerson started teaching first-grade in 1962 in Chanute and then returned to Parsons to teach kindergarten before she and her late husband, Ron Wilkerson, a Parsons USD 503 science teacher, began a family. When her daughters were older, she returned to the classroom where she taught at several Parsons USD 503 elementary schools, retiring after 34 years. 

Becky Cole, Janice’s daughter, a teacher in Labette County USD 506 since 1994, said she learned from her mother that teaching is “a calling from the heart.” 

“You know if you want to be a teacher,” she said. “You want to change lives.” 

Madison Cole, a first-year teacher and Becky’s daughter, said she inherited her family’s love for teaching and education from a very early age.  

“That’s my goal and my passion when I enter the classroom is to bring a new vision and light,” she said. “I do want to make a difference and these kids are the reason I do it.” 

Madison said another inspiration for becoming a teacher is she remembers seeing the love and excitement in the eyes of the students her mother and grandmother taught when she would see them interact in the Parsons community. 

Becky, who teaches fourth grade, and Madison, who teaches sixth grade English language arts, are both at Meadow View Elementary, Labette County USD 506, in classrooms that are next to each other. In addition to her mother, Madison is also working alongside teachers she had at Meadow View as a child. 

“I knew when I chose education as a lifelong career, I wanted to land somewhere where it feels like home,” Madison said. “Well, I landed where it was home. I was raised here.” 

The atmosphere at Meadow View, Madison said, is inviting and supportive, from the teachers to the principals who don’t always get the credit they deserve, she said. 

“They are rooting for us, the second we walk in the door,” she said. “All of our staff is just phenomenal. They work hard for us.”  

As Madison begins her teaching career, her mother and grandmother have seen many changes in education over the past several decades. Becky said the biggest change she has seen are the advances in teaching technology that has led to more student collaboration. For Janice, however, she noticed a decrease in parental involvement that may have delayed some children’s learning. 

“It wasn’t that these other children didn’t have the ability (to learn),” she said. “They just didn’t have the love and support they needed.”  

Even with all the changes education has experienced over the years, the one constant the three women wholeheartedly agree on, which has been passed from one generation to the next, is that each child deserves to know they are loved and cared for by their teachers. 

“That was my first job,” Janice said. “I always said, ‘you have to love them before you can teach them.’” 

Another piece of teaching wisdom Becky said she got from her father was to recognize something positive about every student, every day. 

“He would say, ‘everyone wants to be noticed, everyone wants to be acknowledged,’” she said. “Just notice that they are present in your classroom.”    

Madison said she remembers vividly as a child when her mother would come home from school, feeling all the emotions after dealing with a difficult student that day and asking what more she could do to help that child. 

“A lot of great advice has been passed down to me and I keep that near and dear,” Madison said, gesturing to her heart. “She would always say, ‘you hold their hand and tell them you love them.’ When they know you love them, they will climb mountains for you.’”