After nearly a full semester, Rachel Lyman, the newly hired fourth grade teacher at Elgin Elementary, is expressing gratitude for a teaching position within her own community.
“I feel blessed and so thankful to be working here,” she said. “My home is in Elgin, just five minutes from the school. My own kids went to school here, and now I have two grandchildren in the area.”
This semester Lyman has faced the transition from being a specialist to teaching in a classroom with 13 students. “It is different,” she laughed. “Luckily, I like being busy. I have quickly developed a new appreciation for what general education teachers deal with each day. The one constant has been that the kids are wonderful.”
On the day of our interview, Lyman was busy preparing for the school walkathon, arranging time for school pictures and supervising indoor recess. She also works each day with students who need speech support.
Lyman has an extensive background in speech language pathology, dating back to the 1990s. She earned her B.S. at Rutgers and her M.S. at the University of Arizona in Speech and Hearing Sciences. She has contracted with multiple schools, including those in Elgin and Patagonia, as a speech pathologist.
Starting in 2023, Lyman worked at the Benson Unified School District as Exceptional Student Services Director and Speech Language Pathologist. There she managed speech pathology needs for preschool through 12th grade.
“After working for years in five or six school districts at once, I wanted to become more involved in one school district, so I took the position in Benson,” she explained. “I loved the job in Benson, but it was too far from home. I missed being a part of my own local community.”
Lyman is currently enrolled in college classes after school, such as Twenty-First Century Teaching Strategies, which have helped Lyman incorporate technology into her teaching. “I am a life-long learner, so I like expanding my skills,” she said.
She sees major shifts in teaching since she started. “Teachers always worked with critical thinking skills and problem solving,” she said, “but new brain-based research and learning techniques are showing us how to better connect students to material being taught. “
For instance, Lyman likes to see students get more hands-on with materials. Research shows that learning is an active process and movement reinforces learning, so Lyman has pupils move about the classroom and become physically active. Vertical lightboards serve as tools that she places in various spots around her room. Smaller groups move from one board to another solving problems. This is particularly effective for math. Groups “steal” problems from each other, and the whole process becomes quite lively. She uses similar techniques with the lightboards for improving vocabulary.
Keeping busy on the weekends is no problem with family nearby, including her husband who is retired from the U.S. Forest Service. “One of my kids is starting a new Sonoita feed store, so you could find me there on the weekends,” she said. “I like to bake cookies and take them to the store. I like gardening and working outside. I feel so fortunate to be full-time now in Elgin.”