Retired teacher reflects on 50 years in Vestavia schools

Mary Williams has taught in Sunday school rooms, the basement of the Civic Center and in school buildings both new and old. But she has always taught in Vestavia Hills.

Williams retired in 2017 after a 50-year career that began and ended in Vestavia schools, even before the city had its own school system.

Her first educating experience was playing teacher to her younger sisters. A wonderful sixth grade teacher, Williams said, cemented her desire to be a teacher.

As a student teacher from Samford University, Williams entered Vestavia Elementary’s third grade classroom for the first time in 1967, when it was still part of Jefferson County Schools. She stayed on as a full time fourth grade teacher and, when the city chose to split from the county to create its own school system in 1970, Williams decided to join them.

“I just decided to stay, even though they jokingly said, ‘You can stay with Vestavia but we don’t know exactly where your first paycheck will come from,’” Williams said.

The early years of Vestavia Hills City Schools had some challenges, including lack of funding and buildings, that inspired creative solutions, Williams recalled. In the first year of the new school system, Williams taught fourth graders in the Vestavia Hills Civic Center’s exercise room. They would have sandwiches delivered every day since they didn’t have a regular cafeteria.

“It was rough at first. The system did not have the income that is here now,” she said.

After that, Williams’ classroom was relocated to the Vestavia United Methodist Church, where she and the other teachers would walk the children to the elementary school, which would become Vestavia Hills Elementary East, each day to eat lunch with the other elementary students.

Williams also taught at Pizitz for several years when it housed grades 4-8. While the face of VHCS looked very different from today, she said many of its values — including a standard of excellence — are the same.

“All in all, some of those were my best years. We got a lot done, our test scores were still high,” she said. “The community was supportive, the parents were supportive, the children were delightful. I just enjoyed the area. It was a great place to be.”

Williams taught Vestavia’s fourth graders until 1997, including at West and Central elementary schools, when she retired and moved to a part-time position in academic support at Central. This new role included working with students who were struggling in math, English as a second language, reading and other subjects.

“I never thought that I would be there that long, but I really enjoyed what I did and I felt like I was helping those students,”Williams said.

In 2017, she decided to retire from Vestavia schools completely. Williams and her husband Jim — a former Vestavia principal at East during 1981-99 — have three grandchildren, plus one more on the way, and are ready to start spending more time with them. When the grandkids get a little older, Williams said she also wants to spend more time traveling.

But there’s plenty she’ll miss about the school system that she has watched grow, including the children and the family of coworkers she has seen every day.

“We feel like this is home, even though we didn’t live here,” Williams said.