When Lori Copley was 22 years old in 1983, she took a teaching job at Waterman Elementary School, thinking she would work there for 20 years and then retire.
But now, 41 years later, she’s still there — and is currently the longest-serving Harrisonburg City Public Schools teacher, still teaching at a school she once attended, and showing no signs of slowing down.
“I went to kindergarten and first grade here, and then we moved to Keister,” Copley said. “So, I’m a product of this school division.”
Copley currently teaches second grade but spent most of her career in first grade. In her 42nd year of teaching, she now instructs dual language students, a program the school division did not offer when she began.
Copley is following in her family’s footsteps — her parents were also both teachers, her mother also at Waterman and her father at Harrisonburg High School. Her father also attended Waterman as a kindergarten student in the 1930s, and her parents met at the school, in the very room where Copley now teaches, which was part of the library.
Copley has many years of teaching under her belt, but she can pick out a few memorable ones. There was the year she was pregnant with her son, when the students threw her a baby shower.
“They were just so sweet and kind all year,” she said.
When Copley’s first husband, a police officer, was alive, he often gave presentations to students about gun safety. But when he died one summer after drowning at Nags Head, her fellow teachers worked hard to support her, even switching classes ahead of the school year to give Copley what she called “an amazing class of kids” that year.
“Of course, their parents told them, because it happened in July. Kids would say, ‘My mom said I can’t ask you this, but,’” Copley said. “And it didn’t bother me a bit, because they were just curious little questions.”
One little girl’s comment was particularly memorable.
“He had been a deputy sheriff, so I had some of his old hats that were lying around [the classroom],” Copley said. “And one little girl asked me, ‘Where did you get the hats?’ I said, ‘Oh, they’re my husband’s, but he didn’t need them anymore.’ Just thinking, they’re old, you know? And she goes, ‘Well, of course not. You don’t wear hats in heaven, you wear halos.’”
At the end of that school year in 1998, many parents thanked Copley for a job well done.
“I had so many parents that thanked me at the end of the year, that their child came away seeing that you could lose somebody and you could be O.K.,” she said. “You know, it just meant a lot.”
Copley also remembers 2001, when the 9/11 terror attacks happened, and she was teaching a class of first graders. To avoid frightening the young students, the teachers kept the TVs off, and administrators came to the classroom doors with a printed note explaining what had happened.
“We were told to cut off all the screens,” Copley said. “Don’t cut on the TV, don’t turn on the radio. Just go about as if things were okay. We had a lot of people who did come and pull their kids out.”
Copley spent the day running to the TV whenever the class was at lunch or specials, and finally, they got the news that all after-school activities were canceled.
“My son was like, ‘What is going on?’ I think he was in ninth grade,” Copley said. “I mean, you never cut football practice at Harrisonburg [High School].”
Education itself has also changed over the years, Copley said, and the curriculum continues to get increasingly rigorous. She no longer has a lot of time for some of the fun, extra things she did with her students in the past.
“What I was doing when I started doesn’t even come close to what I’m doing now, in terms of academic rigor,” she said.
But sometimes they have time for more fun in the week before Winter Break, which is Copley’s favorite time of the school year.
“There’s maybe a day or two where there’s a little freedom to do a few fun things like we used to do,” Copley said. “It’s not that nobody wants us to do them, it’s simply that the curriculum is boom, boom, boom. But there’s a little time to do some fun things, and they love it, too. Best day ever.”
The curriculum is also more structured now, with less freedom for teachers, Copley said. It’s even more structured for Copley, since she has two different classes of students, one in the morning and one in the afternoon, as part of the dual language program.
“It was pretty much, you made your own schedule,” Copley said. “They told you when lunch was, and when you went to P.E., but you kind of figured out your day, your schedule.”
But one of the biggest changes has been the technology students use. Copley has been teaching all the way from the era where TVs were rolled into classrooms on carts to now, where students have their own Chromebooks.
“We didn’t even have a computer when I started,” Copley said. “Now they all have their own Chromebooks, of course. That came along with COVID, but there was no thought of screen time. We might watch a 15-minute educational TV show.”
There are a few nostalgic toys in Copley’s classroom, like View-Masters and colored wooden blocks, along with a library of children’s books. The cubbies on the walls are old library shelves, and students sit at the same little desks they’ve always used. A rocking chair in the corner, which Copley bought at Cracker Barrel, has lasted for decades in her classroom.
But all her things will have to last a little longer, because Copley is planning to teach as long as she can.
“It seems like each year gets a little more challenging,” Copley said. “It’s really one year at a time, and I’ve really enjoyed it.”
She said that while a lot has changed around them, the kids she teaches are still essentially the same.
“They still have that desire to learn, that interest. You might take a little more of a dog-and-pony show to do it, but you can still spark their interest,” she said. “I think overall, they still want to learn. They like to be here with their friends. That part hasn’t changed.”