Rohr touches lives long after students leave her classroom

Teacher Barbara Rohr has touched the lives of hundreds of students in the past 12 years, but her reach extends far beyond the classroom.

Rohr started the child care careers program at the Career and Technology Center at State Fair Community College in 1996, and has taught more than 300 teenagers from 10 schools in the area since then.

Many of those students, in turn, have influenced the lives of other, younger children in day care centers and home child care settings throughout the region.

“Some of my students now have the big centers. ... I was real thrilled about the Imagination Station that just opened. That was one of my students,” Rohr said.

Now, some of Rohr’s present students are job shadows at that day care center.

“It’s been an exciting thing to watch them. A lot of the kids that come to vo-tech schools sometimes don’t have the opportunity in their own sending schools and some of them don’t have the self- worth,” Rohr said. “It’s exciting to see them realize that that they can learn, they can set goals, and they can meet dreams.”

Establishing that self-worth is a key for success of children, regardless of their age, Rohr said.

“I train (high school students) specifically for them to work on children’s self-esteem and do it in a positive manner,” she said.

Her husband, Kerwin, nominated Rohr for the Freedom Torch Award because he feels that educators such as his wife get little recognition for hours of hard work. “Basically, from an educational standpoint, she gives so much of herself,” said Mr. Rohr, who retired from Smith-Cotton High School after 34 years as a teacher here and in Iowa. “And this is one way that I thought that she needed to be recognized.”

She has worked as a teacher for 22 years in all and ran her own day care center in Iowa. She’s been named to Who’s Who Among American Teachers for the past nine years.

In all, Rohr has former students working in 14 states as child care providers, preschool teachers and teachers’ aides.

She keeps up with them through e-mails, greeting cards, letters and phone calls. One former student, who lives in Kansas, makes it a point to call Rohr as she passes through Sedalia on her way to visit family members in Warsaw. Rohr tells story after story of young people, mostly girls, who came to her program lacking confidence and left with a skill to share with others.

Rohr , 57, advises the Family Career and Community Leaders of America chapter, and her students have been named state champions for the past seven years and received gold medals at the national contest. This year, the chapter is taking a break from the state competition, as Rohr recovers from one broken ankle and one sprained ankle — injuries that have taken her out of the classroom.

Rohr, named a master FCCLA adviser in 2006, takes pride that some her students’ projects have been adopted for use in other states, including one to teach young victims of Hurricane Katrina not to be fearful as they piece together their communities again.

Still, she thinks it’s her students who give the most.

“I think I’ve done a lot of things. I’ve helped a lot of kids, but I think in the long run, I have gained much more from them than they have from me,” she said.