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By GLADYS RIPSFREEHOLD TOWNSHIP -“She’s the oldest teacher in the district in age and seniority and the youngest in heart,” said Marshall W. Errickson, superintendent ofschools.He was describing Laura Donovan, who just started her fifty-fourth year in this school district. Mrs. Donovan now teaches a special class of$170 Fine Is Levied In HolmdelHOLMDEL — Municipal Court iudge Seymour R. Kleinberg has fined Paul Nas-ta, Closter, §170 on charges of being a disorderly person and driving without a license in his possession.Assessed on charges of driving while impaired and careless driving were William A. McQueeny, 58 Country Club Road, Eatontown, §120, and John N. Thompson, Long Island,.$70. Both received six-month license revocations.Fined $25 each on charges of speeding and delinquent'return of summons were John J. Ferraro, Union, and Mark J. Humenny, Jersey City.Assessed $20 each were John J. McNulty, 71 Morris Ave., Belford, charges of careless driving and driving with defective tires; Catherine P. White, Newark, charges of speeding and delinquent return of summons, and Michael S. Riss-ma n, . New Brunswick, charges of passing on the right and delinquentreturn of summons.Fined $15 each were Henry Mann, 12 Stonehenge Drive, and Gary H. Rosengren, 7 Creek Road, Hazlet, both on careless driving charges: Joseph Miano, Nutley, and Robert D. Wilner, Fairlawn, both ' on speeding charges, and Al-fred Hammon, North Plainfield' charge of passing bn the right.Albert W. Pauwels, Rutherford, was assessed $10 on a careless driving charge..Richard E. Hetfield Jr., Plainfield, drew a suspended $5 fine on a charge of. passing on the right. He paid $5 court costs.educable children in the two year old school building that was named after her.A week before school opened, she bustled about her spacious modern classroom unpacking cartons of books that she had brought from her private collection at home to supplement what the school supplies. The levels of reading difficulty ranged fromfirst through sixth grades.Reading Required “In my class, they have to learn to read,” she said.She used to teach in a one-room schoolhouse here. “But she’s not old, a woman in her fifties ” was the way a local resident recently described Mrs. Donovan.Although Mrs. Donovan says that her age Is not for publication, she admits to having started teaching in 1916 — “I started young,” she said with a sly smile — so the “in her fifties” estimate is certainly short of the mark.Perhaps her youthfulness fc hereditary. After all, her father William Sothard “died 40 years ago at the age of 95.” Children Aplenty Or perhaps it’s the energy and enthusiasm that comes across when §he talks about “my children,” past and present. Although she and her husband John II. Donovan, a mechanic at Cameron and Roberson, have no children of their own, “I have thousands of children,” she said.She has even taken under her wing two young men who are building a house for the Donovans in Cape May, where they plan to move when they retire in about a year.Born and raised in the township of a family that settled in the area in the sixteen hundreds, Mrs. Donovan lives in the ranch house that her husband built on Georgia Schoolhouse Rd., about a quarter of a mile from the one .room schoolhouse in which she first taught here.Her mother, an Applegate, was of English descent. Two of her uncles were killed at the Battle of Monmouth. The family came first to Island Heights and Toms River, and then to Freehold Township. ' Mrs. Donovan's first teaching experience was in a one-room school in Howell, where she stayed for one year.When she first came to theGeorgia School in 1917, she taught 17 children from kindergarten ( through eighth grade all in one room. Before the year was over, people who had “moved back to the cities . .. flocked back,” and her class grew to 38 pupils.Although Mrs. Donovan went back to school to qualify for special teaching, she attributes much of her success to her experiences in the one room school. Both there and in teaching educables, she has worked with children at different levels at the same time in the same classroom.Works in Groups“I work with them in groups — depending on where they are —sometimes there’s only one,” she explained.She believes in keeping all the children busy all the time. The activities vary according to the child’s ability and' learning level.In the old school house, one pupil couldn’t learn to read but “could do anything with a saw.” She had another boy practice his reading by reading carpentry instructions to the boy with the saw.But most of the time, she manages to find a way of getting her charges to read. Some of the pupils in her special class read at a sixth grade level, “which is as far1as some adults get,” she said with pride.The children in Mrs. Dono-. van’s special class are between 10 and 13 years old. She works with them in groups that vary from one to three children in a group. Also, the children “help each other.” Another important part of the teacher’s role, she feels, is to “help children know they’re loved and understood,” and to “keep them busy and happy.”In her one room school experience, she learned that “children have got to be Understood . . . they're all individuals, not the same, and they themselves know they’re different. . . they have to learn to use their personalities in a constructive way... Children today are insecure, unhappy — that’s the reason for so much violence.”Before she taught there, her father and uncles attended the Georgia School, which was built in 1793. During her childhood, the school doubled as a church.“One Sunday it was Baptist, and the other Sunday it was Methodist. 1 never found out which one I was.”A hundred years ago, when her uncle went there, the Georgia School was used for Sunday school rallies and picnics. Now it is the site of tl\e District 3 voting polls on election day.Restoration Pushed This year, the Molly Pitcher Club has undertaken to restore the old schoolhouse as an historic landmark.When Mrs. Donovan left the Georgia School in 1930, she went to teach in the eight room Consolidated School, the original West Freehold School. However, after a spurt of township growth in 1947 the school was overcrowded.Mrs. Donovan fought against proposals to put the school on double session. Instead, the school district reopened the Georgia School, where she taught 30 third, fourth, and fifth graders in one room until 1950, when she returned to the West Freehold School after it had been enlarged to 12 classrooms.Since then, housing developments and industry have whittled away at farmland in this rapidly growing community which, as a result, is building a,3new school about every two years. When the school on Stonehurst Blvd. was completed in 1968, the administration decided to honor Mrs. Donovan for her fifty years of service by naming it after her.■ . » , • . ibvi /• n. • ,; v • m, w.jl. -• ai«: VCLASSROOM SCENES — The veteran teacher started teaching in Freehold Town* ship in 1917 at the one-room Georgia School, Now the holds forth m thfa modern classroom in the school that bears her name.
Newspaper Details
Red Bank Register
Red Bank, New Jersey, US
Wed, Sep 23, 1970
Page 7
Full Page
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NJ, USA 11 Jun 2019
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