ROLE MODEL OF THE MONTH

Teacher shapes lives by loving students

Question: What happens when bullets get married? Answer: They have little BB's. Okay so it wouldn't win the Pulitzer Prize for humor, but over the years the joke teller has won the hearts and influenced the minds of thousands of area students.

Jacqueline Singleton had no idea why I was calling and asking her for an interview. Especially when I mentioned it was for the new feature on role models. I too was a little curious. I was hoping, no offense to Mrs. Singleton, to get an interview with Gandhi or Mother Teresa. These are role models, right? Well, neither has returned my call, so I had to go to my secondary list, which is when I called Singleton.

Through the conversation I reevaluated what a role model was exactly. Are role models the super famous, super rich, super duper people, in whose presence I would quiver and sweat and dream that someday they could knock me over, or that I could get hit by their limo?

I hope not.

I prefer a role model to be someone I know Someone who has taught me, cared for me, and has patiently led me through the problems of life.

Someone who has corrected me when I was in error and was always there for me when I got detention. I'm speaking of my high school math teacher of course.

Singleton has been teaching math and statistics for over 30 years. She taught at Bayside High School for the first 18 years, and has been at Tallwood High School for over 10 years. Singleton and Warren, her husband who is a minister at The Road to Emmaus church in Virginia Beach, have a daughter Aminah and a son Asa.

Besides her involvement at Emmaus and providing premarital counseling alongside her husband, Singleton's greatest outreach is to her students. The concern for students and wanting to impact their lives is what drew Singleton to teaching.

She has shown her love for her students from the simple jokes that she tells (the jokes in this article being two of her shorter ones) and by the Christian witness her students see and respect. She is also bold about her faith, sharing openly with students when appropriate and praying with students who request it.

Over the years she has planted many seeds and has not yet seen the sort of fruit she would have liked. And yet "I knew that I was to continue to plant seeds," Singleton pointed out. "Eventually" seeds do bare fruit. One student told her that she became a teacher because of Singleton's class.

Asked how she has continued to teach with vigor and concern after 30 years, she responded that in order to make it as a teacher, "you really have to love the students." Over the years it has become harder being a teacher, she told me. There is more pressure in regards to SOL's (standards of learning), and keeping students interested and stimulated when you have to compete against computers, movies, and music.

The most amazing thing to me about Singleton is how unassuming she was during the interview, which is the example of a real servant: humble, meek, and unpretentious. By the end of the interview, she was still perplexed as to why I was interviewing her.

"I really don't see that what I do is any different from any other teacher," she said. "This spotlight, if anything, would just be one person representing the hundreds and thousands of teachers who do the same thing that I do. I really don't think that I do anything exceptional ... it's just a part of the job."

In a way, I guess she's right. The only problem is how am I going to interview them all. But if they have the heart, humor and faithfulness of Jaqueline Singleton, then it will just have to be done.

Question: Of Mr. Bigger, Mrs. Bigger and baby Bigger, which is bigger?

Answer: Baby Bigger, because he's just a little bigger.

by Philip Pfanstiel

published in The Hampton Roads Christian

published Sept / Oct 1999