By Amanda Klare
Beechwood Elementary
Thomas Wolfe obviously wasn’t from Beechwood, because you can go home again.
The tree-lined street in the heart of Fort Mitchell draws you back to Beechwood like a magnet. It’s strange how just a quick glance of the school’s copula can flood your memory with your kindergarten to twelfth grade experiences.
If the large maple trees towering over the front lawn could talk, they would attempt to explain to strangers that its seniors toilet papered them and not the school’s rivals like it might appear from the outside looking in.
Though the campus is beautiful with its perfect blend of the old with the new, what stands out most is the people that fill its hallways. The combination of dynamic students, devoted faculty, parental involvement, and its united administration team keep the district on top.
Beechwood has been able to continue its tradition of excellence with its ability to create a culture of innovation all while still upholding the traditions that the district are built upon. In merely a three-minute walk down the hallway, you can be outside a kindergarten classroom and end up in a high school AP Biology class.
This past June as I sat amongst the district’s distinguished faculty members, I was able to proudly watch my first group of fourth graders walk across the gymnasium to receive their high school diploma. These are the little things that make this place special and unlike other schools.
Beechwood is more than tradition…it’s a way of life.
As I said before, if you’re lucky enough, you can go home again. People graduate from this learning institution just to return years later once they have their own kids; it’s an inevitable Beechwood cycle that alums are fortunate to repeat.
Graduates want their own kids to become Tigers and to be initiated into the Beechwood family. I should know because my parents both were graduates from this fine establishment, only to move back into Fort Mitchell so my sister and I could attend as well.
This spring my cousin Casey and his wife just had their first baby boy, Gene. In one of the initial pictures I saw of Gene, he was wearing a Beechwood onesie with his dad’s football number. This mirrored a similar picture taken of Casey iwhen he was a baby, wearing his dad’s Beechwood number.
In the elementary school, I am one of eleven teachers who are proud Beechwood graduates who were blessed enough to return back to their alma mater as faculty members.
It’s not shocking that in the Wizard of Oz, Dorothy’s slippers were a Beechwood ruby red, because she knew the magic words as she clicked her heels together were “There’s no place like home.”
Beechwood is home and like Dorothy, we all can’t wait to get back there.
Amanda Klare is a fourth-grade teacher at Beechwood Elementary School with ten years teaching experience. She is a co-director of the Northern Kentucky Writing Project She is a Kentucky Hope Street Fellow for the 2017-18 school year.
Voices from the Classroom is a new feature at NKyTribune, thanks to Amanda Klare’s initiative. If you are a teacher and would like to contribute to the column, please submit it to judy@nkytrib.com
Thank you, Amanda Klare for this article and for your initiative. It is refreshing to read something positive. Good luck to you and all your fellow teachers.
The NKyTribune has to add a special thanks to Amanda Klare as well. She is one example of the great teachers out there. We are proud of the new series and the chance to celebrate them.