A Passion for Learning and Teaching

By: Elana Hadi and Hannah Young (Edited by Katie Su)

Storytelling, universal values and a passion for teaching and reaching.

Paula Pursley grew up in Warrensburg, Missouri. She completed her primary, high school, and college education there. She was one of six children and learned to be a hard worker at an early age. She worked a wide range of jobs including babysitting, newspaper and milk delivery, manufacturing, secretarial work and several other jobs but teaching was her first career choice. Her favorite childhood memory was going to her Uncle’s farm on Pomme de Terre River in Hermitage, Missouri, where she and her family would camp out, fish, and swim.

Paula Pursley has been teaching for 43 years (including substitute teaching). She received an elementary education degree from Central Missouri State University, a master’s degree in education at Southern Baptist University, and a gifted certification from Drury University in 1996. She started her teaching career in Hermitage, Missouri where she taught part-time and also pulled out at risk kids and tutored them. She was hired into a “difficult to teach” classroom, where the children had a history of being extremely rambunctious. She recalls being patient with the main problem ringleader and bringing homework to his house when he was sick. In the end, this student expressed his gratitude and respect to her.  He gave her a travel game to give to her children and apologized for all the trouble he gave her.

She started the gifted program in Hermitage, Missouri. While doing this, she was taking a night course at Phelps towards her gifted certification. She prepared a hat’s off to gifted lesson that Sara Lampe, the gifted education administrator at that time, took notice of.  Ms. Lampe asked her to come to Springfield to teach at Phelps.  Ms. Pursley was blown away but was committed to starting a gifted program in Hermitage.  Ms. Lampe was persistent and a year later Ms. Pursley was teaching at WINGS.

Ms. Pursley started at Phelps in 1997, teaching third grade for four years and fourth grade for the past sixteen years. She has been team teaching with Debbie Clary for the past fifteen years. She feels like Ms. Clary is a sister to her and that they have been very effective in teaching, classroom management and writing and developing new curriculum.

One of her major accomplishments is that she makes learning fun for her students and really engaging for them. She enjoys helping students who don’t have a passion for the subject at the beginning to love what they are learning at the end. She was asked to start a major unit in science so she taught herself chemistry. She and Ms. Clary developed a chemistry folder for WINGS that former students still tell her they are using in college. She enjoys teaching what a colleague’s husband called “weird sciency things” to her students. She has been using cow skeletons in her classroom for years.  Her preference would be teaching a physics class.

Ms. Pursley’s favorite subjects to teach are science and chemistry. Her second favorite subject to teach is poetry.  She wrote all the curriculum for the third grade when she started at Phelps. She changed a lot of the curriculum based off of the poetry that she likes to write.

Her favorite traits of gifted students include their creativity; bright minds; and brutal honesty. She just loves listening to the kids.  She knows that gifted children are not “so smart” that they will make it on their own so she tries to love them where they are and for who they are and she does not try to change them.   She does not allow put downs or vulture statements. She loves a poster on her wall with the Eleanor Roosevelt quote “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent” and she thinks that is important to know that. She believes students need to be open-minded to education and new learning beliefs. She sees intrinsic motivation as the key. She tells kids their job is being a student which means they are on time, complete their assignments, listen in class and communicate with others.

If she could tell society one thing about gifted children it is that they are children and should not be treated like adults.   She thinks that there is no such thing as a cookie cutter gifted child and that no pre-judgements should be made.

Ms. Pursley has been writing grants to support at risk students, teach math manipulatives and other subjects for gifted students for a long time. Most of her classroom grant requests have been successful. Writing grants comes easy to Ms. Pursley and when other teachers need to write grants sometimes they ask Ms. Pursley to write them as when the robotics lab wanted new equipment one year and she wrote that grant.

Ms. Pursley would like to see more gifted instruction programs for teachers while they are getting their undergraduate degree to see how gifted kids think and how their brains work. One change she would like to see in gifted education would be to make it a mandated program with a focus on affective education.

Ms. Pursley is a huge believer in storytelling to hook the students attention and give them something to relate too. She sees storytelling as a lost art and a good way to address peer group issues. Her hopes for all her students are that they become good citizens with a high work ethic, integrity and who treat others with respect, empathy and kindness.

Ms. Pursley has two children who are gifted, and three gifted grandchildren. Her hobbies include scrapbooking; writing poetry; attending church functions; music; and watching her grandchildren’s sports and school events.

May 2017 was Ms. Pursley’s last year at Phelps. She is retiring and does not know what her plans are yet.   Her number one priority is to improve her health. She is thinking about traveling to see family, and traveling abroad with her daughter. What she will miss most about teaching is her students and colleagues.

We will miss her greatly as she is a dedicated and passionate teacher.  We wanted to include some closing quotes.

Quotes from Ms. Pursley:

“My strongest memories are those kids who are at risk, and if we didn’t turn their life around, they probably would have been dropouts.”

“I guarantee if you would just let me sit by you and explain it to you, you are going to get it and eventually you are going to love it.”

“I would just kind of nurture them and take them under my wing and I would turn them around.”

Quotes from us:

“My WINGS day on Monday was always very fun.  Ms. Pursley taught me many things and about teamwork.  She told us funny and interesting stories.  One of my favorite things to do with her was the game SET.  She is a fabulous teacher.”  Katie Su

“Ms. Pursley is amazing!” Hannah Young

“Ms. Pursley in wonderful in every category.  She is nice, smart, a great story teller and knows everything she teaches extremely well.  She is one of the best. “Elana Hadi