For her students, Barbara Rector wielded tough love, respect and peace in the classroom.
Mrs. Rector had been an English teacher at Canyon High School for decades, but just a few weeks into the school year, she succumbed to breast cancer.
Her students from previous years and even the ones she was just getting to know wrote more than 300 notes and letters to her husband, Jim Rector, and two generations of her students were present at her funeral.
She affected the lives of so many students and faculty that a multitude of students and staff at CHS are getting together and creating a scholarship fund and memorial in her name.
The goal of the scholarship is to give $500 to a senior who knows he or she wants to enter the teaching profession after college. Grades and a submitted essay will determine who receives the scholarship each year.
Also in the works is a memorial bench with a plaque with her name on it, to go in a courtyard with trees that is planned as part of the new library renovation at CHS.
“It’s a great way to have her name continued on,” said Marsha Hammond, an English teacher at CHS.
“During National Key Club week, we took in numerous donations, had a Chili’s night where people could donate ten percent of the cost of their meal, and had a battle of the bands at Wings and Rings, where they could also donate ten percent of their checks,” Hammond said. “As a school we had a day where we all had pink on, and donations were also taken from the New Braunfels Church of Christ,” where Rector was a congregant.
At present, the fund is up to $1,200, and they expect more. Student council will be donating money, and the Key Club will plan future fundraising efforts to keep the scholarship available.
“We have a ‘ready, set teach’ program, hopefully we can give it to someone in that,” Hammond said.
Jim Rector said the details are not finalized, but he and Principal Brad Brown “are supposed to sit down and try to put it all together.”
A profound effect on the lives of her students
“Students she had as long ago as ten years ago said one of the things that was unique was that she would call them Mr. and Miss. It was a sign of respect and also that she expected them to act like adults,” Jim Rector said of some of the comments and condolences that he has received from her former students.
“She stood at the door and greeting them one by one as they came into class,” he said. “She was always smiling, always happy.”
In spite of her genuine positive and cheerful demeanor, Rector said she was in a lot of pain towards her final days, and would schedule her weekly chemotherapy Thursday evenings because, “It would take a day for her to get sick from it, so she could be at school Friday, be sick Saturday and Sunday and be back at school on Monday. Those kids knew that she was in pain.”
In a letter Jim Rector received from a student that he said must have had a rough childhood, the former student wrote, “I never felt peace in my life until I walked into Mrs. Rector’s class.”
Others wrote of the lessons they internalized and took well beyond their educations.
“She believed in kids. When students had trouble getting started writing an essay, she would tell them all the time ‘put a pen in your hand and start writing,” Rector said.
That apparently stuck for many, as one former student wrote, “I don’t know really what to say about Mrs. Rector, other than I put this pen in my hand and I’m writing.”
