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Photo by Hans Hallgren

Rosie Crosthwaite, 73, remembers the ups and downs of her 27 years as director of St. Mark's Preschool. Coinciding with Crosthwaite's retirement, the preschool will close when she vacates her old classroom.

Craig — In the basement of St. Mark's Episcopal Church, miniature chairs sit at knee-high tables, empty, as if waiting for the next class of 3-year-olds to troop down the stairs with their muddy shoes and miles of craft paper and Scotch tape.

Close to three decades of 100-piece puzzles, Dr. Seuss books and endless toys line the shelves and tables.

But one cubby has not been emptied.

Inside the cubby is a pencil case, a tiny pair of slippers, a box of Kleenex and a nametag in the shape of a green apple, which reads "Jason."

"I'll have to get Jason's mom to come pick up his things," said Rosie Crosthwaite, former director and teacher at St. Mark's Preschool, as she placed his possessions on a table of toys waiting to be moved out of the basement.

Crosthwaite, 73, retired at the end of May after nearly three decades at St. Mark's.

She said her departure will be bittersweet.

"I have a lot of mixed emotions about leaving it," she said. "I'll probably be walking over here, driving over here out of force of habit."

As she cleans 27 years of memories out of her classroom, she reflected on her lifetime role as a teacher.

"I like just teaching," she said. "I love working with children. It's just so much fun to watch them learn. It's so exciting when they're struggling with a concept, and all of the sudden they get it. And it's like a light bulb turns on in their minds, and their faces light up, and it's like, 'Oh, I know that. I can do that.'"

A lifetime of teaching

Crosthwaite has been a teacher her entire life.

As a 9-year-old in Meeker, she babysat her neighbors' children when they went to the grocery store.

After high school, she went away to Colorado State University, in hopes of someday becoming a high school home economics teacher.

But her experiences teaching Sunday school told her that her heart lies with the little ones.

She married and moved to Craig and commuted to Steamboat Springs for five years to get her preschool directorship.

In 1982, she noticed a demand for a stand alone preschool and started a half-day program in the basement of St. Mark's, bringing her own teaching philosophy and traditions to the children of Craig.

Each day in Miss Rosie's class, the children would line up in the other room - a skill they would need to know when they graduated to kindergarten - file into the classroom and form a circle.

During "circle time," Crosthwaite and her children would discuss everything from the weather to the time of day, the seasons to the alphabet letter of the week.

"You want them to want to learn," Crosthwaite said. "You want them to be excited about learning. You have to try to approach them on their level. It can't be, 'sit in your chair, sit up straight, do this, do that.' Children love to talk. They love to tell you what they've seen, where they've been and how they feel."

Children's feelings are one of the reason's she feels connected to her students. She said there is a lot to be learned from children's spontaneous acts of emotions.

"Children will come and crawl up on your lap," she said. "They'll come and hug around your legs. You can just tell when they need some extra (tender loving care). And that's always been a top priority for the helpers and me: If a child needs some extra TLC, we give it to them."

However, along with those moving displays of affection, Crosthwaite said there are many sudden acts of anger and frustration.

"We'd get some here who don't have very stable home lives and who get frustrated very easily," she said.

When that happened, she would take the student into another room and let them know that their fellow students didn't want to see or hear his or her tantrum and that they could finish venting in the other room. Then, if the student was ready, she'd try to talk out the problem.

Crosthwaite said she had one student who had a tendency to lash out. She spent a lot of time working with him, trying to model correct behavior.

But she'll never forget the day when it hit home that she had made progress.

"He got angry over some thing or another and got up and kicked the chair under the table," she said. "And then he turned around and looked at me and said, 'I know. Let's do that again. We can do it better.' And he pulled the chair out and put it back under the table, and I just about cried. He had realized that his behavior was out of bounds, and he wanted to make a change."

Most of her experiences at St. Mark's, however, were sprinkled with the joy of seeing understanding and excitement on her students' faces.

But they weren't the only ones learning in the basement of the church.

"I learned something every day," Crosthwaite said. "Just watching their relationships to each other and their relationships to adults. I know a lot more today than I did when I started teaching preschool."

She also said she never went a day without something funny happening.

Like the time a little boy ran a truck through a little girl's long blond hair, and the axel got tangled in her locks.

Crosthwaite said she had to call her son-in-law with a pair of wire cutters to cut the truck out of the girl's hair.

"He just wanted to get her attention," she laughed.

Or, the time when a student asked her if she was a witch.

"No, I'm not a witch," she replied. "Why do you think I'm a witch?"

"Because you have a wart on your nose," the student said.

Children don't miss anything, she said.

"You don't have any false pride when you're working with children," she said. "They say things that adults wouldn't say, or things we don't want them to say. But, they're just so honest."

Looking forward

Despite the joy of being in her classroom, Crosthwaite eventually decided it was time to stop.

With three classes of 3- and 4-year-olds, lesson planning and paperwork, Crosthwaite usually worked 50 to 60 hours per week. She finally felt that her body could not take much more.

She said she had no regrets, however.

"Leaving is going to be really hard, and I have had some up and down moments with that," she said. "I've been here for so long. This was my life. My children have grown and moved away. This was my life, and I really didn't mind putting in those hours. But I finally got to the place where I thought, 'I'd better stop.'

"These children were not just children on a list. They were like extended family. When I haven't seen one in a while and I run into them at the grocery store, it's like, 'Oh wow, you've really grown.' It's really exciting when I see them with a child of their own."

In her retirement, Crosthwaite said she will need to continue teaching in some form, though St. Mark's Preschool will close when she is finished cleaning out the room.

Many of the toys will be donated to Eagle's Wings Preschool, where Crosthwaite will work part-time alongside her former assistant, Angie Roberts.

"I'll have a lot of withdrawal, I think," she said. "That's the reason I couldn't just quit. I've had people asking when I was going to retire. My job was never high paying, and the only benefits were the kids.

"I was told, 'Rosie, you can't eat on that when you're old,' But, God has always taken care of me, and he always will. I just could not quit working with children."