When Ms. Doleman asked the senior class who to go to for help with MLA, the PAC echoed with students uniformly shouting “Ms. Cessna!” But she’s more than the ruler she uses to measure your one-inch margins and the red ink she slathers over your papers in her barely-legible handwriting.
The Echo is kicking off this year’s spotlight profiles with its copy editor, Ms. Pat Cessna. This is someone who defines life-long learning. She has loved school since she was a little kid and doesn’t plan on leaving the classroom even when she retires. Here are some funny stories about young Pat before she became Ms. Cessna, plus a few bizarre teaching experiences. And can she accurately guess what her students think of her?
On a quiet Wednesday morning, Ms. Cessna, 63, leans back in her blue swivel chair with an elbow propped on her computer desk. She thinks back to Danville, Illinois, the small factory town where she grew up with four other siblings.
“I have an older brother, five years older,” she said. “He would go off to school every day, and I was so jealous.”
Ms. Cessna sat up in her swivel chair, eyes gleaming with excitement.
“I was like four-years-old, and I wanted to go right then,” she said. “When I started nagging my mother—why can’t I go to school too—she kept saying, ‘You have to be six-years-old!”
“So I keep waiting,” Ms. Cessna said with her voice now a few pitches higher and filled with child-like anticipation, “The morning of my sixth birthday I am awake so early! So excited! …And my mother never came to get me up!”
“And so, I got myself up,” she said with a laugh, “I’m at the door, still in my pajamas, my brother’s ready to go to school, and I’m saying ‘But I’m six! Why can't I go?’”
“Well, of course, my birthday’s in March, so you can’t just decide that you’re going to start the first… yeah,” she said, throwing both hands in the air. “It was really disappointing that I had to wait until August before starting. It was totally unfair. I had been counting on turning six and going to school. I just loved it from day one.”
Ms. Cessna rocked back in her chair again and the pitch of her voice dropped back down to normal.
“In high school, the most interesting class I took was auto mechanics,” she said. “It was the first year they let girls take any of the industrial arts classes.”
“I was not nice to my teacher,” she confessed. “On the tests, he wanted essay-style answers. I wrote them using words I knew he wouldn’t recognize because I had a bigger vocabulary than him.”
She pauses and sits up in her chair again.
“One time, we had partners. I’m working with Booker, and we had already figured out his big mystery on this engine. We had nothing else to do, so he gave us this thing that looks like a flying saucer. He said, ‘Well here, take this apart for me.’”
“So we did! It took us half an hour, but we got the thing completely dismantled and took it back over to him and he goes,
‘What the hell did you do?!’
‘We took it apart! You told us to take it apart!’
‘I didn’t mean take it that far apart! Do you know what we’re going to have to do to get this back together? We don’t even have the machinery to get this back together!’”
She waves her hands in the air over the imaginary machine.
“There were two huge compression springs inside of it, and to this day I don’t know where he expected us to stop taking it apart,” she ranted. “I think he just thought we wouldn't be able to take it apart, and it was something to keep us busy.”
“He was fun. I actually did like him. He was just so stupid!” she said, her pitch rising like a child again. “He wasn’t even a good auto mechanics teacher. If he didn’t want the thing taken apart, he shouldn’t have given it to us as a challenge!”
No wonder Ms. Cessna’s nickname is Sassna. Now you know who the real sass-master is.
After attending a community college, Ms. Cessna got married and had two children. Her daughter is now a social worker in Chicago, and her son was an undercover narcotics agent for ten years. She said she has no idea how he managed to do it for so long, but he now works in retail sales.
When they were still in their pre-teens, Ms. Cessna had just got her teaching certificate in social studies and English. Fun fact: she started with a minor in math and is one class credit away from being certified, but when it came down to that last credit, she trashed the idea and minored in English instead.
Ms. Cessna substituted at different Illinois schools before she started teaching full time.
“I figured out which ones I was never, ever, under any circumstances going to apply for a job with, because they were just beyond belief,” she said, rolled her eyes, and whispered, “horrible.”
“It was actually just one,” she began.
“I found it embarrassing to be in there, the way they were talking about their students,” she said, squinting her eyes, “talking about their physical looks, parts of their anatomy. Whatever you're imagining, make it a little bit worse.
“It was like, oh my god, what is wrong with these people. I decided I did not want to be associated with that kind of mentality. I was in for two days and the second day just reinforced it.”
After substituting for a semester, Ms. Cessna started teaching full time. She taught in the US for about eight years and had always wanted to teach overseas.
“Except my husband at the time was tied to a job that was never going to be marketable overseas, so it was just kind of a pipe drain,” she said.
“One divorce later, it became much more do-able!” she said with a nod.
Ms. Cessna went on to teach in Pakistan for two years. Her last year was “the year the school board went nuts.” A new school board was trying to overthrow the old one and the staff didn’t get paid, so she left.
She then moved to Chennai, India, to teach for another two years. She loved teaching at the school and loved the subcontinent in general, despite the lower school’s building being bombed early on the first day of school by the Tamil Tigers, a militant organization that started the Sri Lankan Civil War.
Next up was four years in Peru. She intended to stay just four years in Shanghai as well, but it’s been 14 years and she still loves it.
Ms. Cessna seems to be one of those teachers you either like or don’t; there’s not much middle ground. She thinks most students lean toward the latter.
“I'm probably one of those teachers they appreciate more later on,” she said after a pause. “Take for instance, the last time I taught AP English Lit. We did six major works. For each one of those, I made them do a research paper. It was 600-1000 words, roughly three pages plus a bibliography, and you know how I am with that.”
For anyone who hasn’t been in Ms. Cessna’s class before, let’s just say she takes points off if you have one space too few or if your quotation marks are straight and not curved in.
“So the grades were pretty low on that first one,” she admitted, “but by the sixth one, I hardly had to open up my red ink pen because they were getting ’em so close to being perfect.”
“Then they go off—almost all of them were seniors,” she said. “The next year, Christmas time, one of them came back to visit. She came in and said, ‘I just wanted to be sure and stop in to say thank you.’ And I said, ‘Thank you...?’
“And she said, ‘I don’t know if you realized it, but all of us hated you last year for making us do all of those stupid research papers, but now that I’m in university, we’re expected to do that all the time. I know what to do, and it’s easy for me. But I look at my roommate, who is actually in tears, crying because she doesn’t know what to do. She doesn’t even know enough to know what to ask.’”
She paused, letting the story sink in.
“So, that’s what makes me think that, which I’m perfectly fine with,” Ms. Cessna said. “I will be friendly, but I’m not here to be your friend. It would be inappropriate. I’m here to teach you, and that’s a little bit different.”
Ms. Cessna isn’t planning on retiring soon and hopes to teach for about another six years, until she’s 70 years old.
“Which means that I have to go some place else to do it,” she said with a shrug. “I would like to stay here, but Shanghai has an age restriction on work visas. I cannot come back even for next year—unless the school does the paperwork to get around that age restriction, like they do for Mr. Green, the orchestra teacher. So far they’ve been not willing to do that, so I am currently finding a job for next year.”
As it turns out, she will not be returning to SAS next year. She’s looking to stay in Asia, possibly international schools in Beijing, Taiwan, or Korea.
“After I retire, I would like to go back to university and study philosophy and architecture,” she said. “For a lot of universities in Illinois, once you get to 65 and beyond, they allow you to audit classes. You buy the books, but you don’t have to pay tuition, write the papers, or do the exams. You’re just there for the good parts of class.
“I’d also like to get into some kind of community service work, but I’m not sure what that’s going to be. Odds are very likely it’ll have something to do with politics.”
Talk about lifelong learning. Ms. Cessna doesn’t even plan on leaving school when she retires, after 29 years of teaching.
Her ruthless red pen may indicate she’s strict and serious, her bibliography rants may make you think she’s boring, but sometimes it’s easy to forget teachers are living, breathing humans with an intricate life of their own.
Ms. Cessna had her “rebel” days when she was a student—or as rebellious as a good kid who loves school can get. She’s experienced her fair share of adventure and travel, and she has aspirations beyond just what she teaches.
Next time you go to her for help with MLA, ask her what she thinks of the latest political development or how it was like to teach in Peru. This spotlight article may have been super long, but it cannot even come close to summarizing who someone is.
Emma Li
 |
| Photos by Emma Li |
On a quiet Wednesday morning, Ms. Cessna, 63, leans back in her blue swivel chair with an elbow propped on her computer desk. She thinks back to Danville, Illinois, the small factory town where she grew up with four other siblings.
“I have an older brother, five years older,” she said. “He would go off to school every day, and I was so jealous.”
Ms. Cessna sat up in her swivel chair, eyes gleaming with excitement.
“I was like four-years-old, and I wanted to go right then,” she said. “When I started nagging my mother—why can’t I go to school too—she kept saying, ‘You have to be six-years-old!”
“So I keep waiting,” Ms. Cessna said with her voice now a few pitches higher and filled with child-like anticipation, “The morning of my sixth birthday I am awake so early! So excited! …And my mother never came to get me up!”
“And so, I got myself up,” she said with a laugh, “I’m at the door, still in my pajamas, my brother’s ready to go to school, and I’m saying ‘But I’m six! Why can't I go?’”
“Well, of course, my birthday’s in March, so you can’t just decide that you’re going to start the first… yeah,” she said, throwing both hands in the air. “It was really disappointing that I had to wait until August before starting. It was totally unfair. I had been counting on turning six and going to school. I just loved it from day one.”
Ms. Cessna rocked back in her chair again and the pitch of her voice dropped back down to normal.
“In high school, the most interesting class I took was auto mechanics,” she said. “It was the first year they let girls take any of the industrial arts classes.”
“I was not nice to my teacher,” she confessed. “On the tests, he wanted essay-style answers. I wrote them using words I knew he wouldn’t recognize because I had a bigger vocabulary than him.”
She pauses and sits up in her chair again.
“One time, we had partners. I’m working with Booker, and we had already figured out his big mystery on this engine. We had nothing else to do, so he gave us this thing that looks like a flying saucer. He said, ‘Well here, take this apart for me.’”
“So we did! It took us half an hour, but we got the thing completely dismantled and took it back over to him and he goes,
‘What the hell did you do?!’
‘We took it apart! You told us to take it apart!’
‘I didn’t mean take it that far apart! Do you know what we’re going to have to do to get this back together? We don’t even have the machinery to get this back together!’”
She waves her hands in the air over the imaginary machine.
“There were two huge compression springs inside of it, and to this day I don’t know where he expected us to stop taking it apart,” she ranted. “I think he just thought we wouldn't be able to take it apart, and it was something to keep us busy.”
“He was fun. I actually did like him. He was just so stupid!” she said, her pitch rising like a child again. “He wasn’t even a good auto mechanics teacher. If he didn’t want the thing taken apart, he shouldn’t have given it to us as a challenge!”
No wonder Ms. Cessna’s nickname is Sassna. Now you know who the real sass-master is.
After attending a community college, Ms. Cessna got married and had two children. Her daughter is now a social worker in Chicago, and her son was an undercover narcotics agent for ten years. She said she has no idea how he managed to do it for so long, but he now works in retail sales.
When they were still in their pre-teens, Ms. Cessna had just got her teaching certificate in social studies and English. Fun fact: she started with a minor in math and is one class credit away from being certified, but when it came down to that last credit, she trashed the idea and minored in English instead.
Ms. Cessna substituted at different Illinois schools before she started teaching full time.
“I figured out which ones I was never, ever, under any circumstances going to apply for a job with, because they were just beyond belief,” she said, rolled her eyes, and whispered, “horrible.”
“It was actually just one,” she began.
“I found it embarrassing to be in there, the way they were talking about their students,” she said, squinting her eyes, “talking about their physical looks, parts of their anatomy. Whatever you're imagining, make it a little bit worse.
“It was like, oh my god, what is wrong with these people. I decided I did not want to be associated with that kind of mentality. I was in for two days and the second day just reinforced it.”
After substituting for a semester, Ms. Cessna started teaching full time. She taught in the US for about eight years and had always wanted to teach overseas.
“Except my husband at the time was tied to a job that was never going to be marketable overseas, so it was just kind of a pipe drain,” she said.
“One divorce later, it became much more do-able!” she said with a nod.
Ms. Cessna went on to teach in Pakistan for two years. Her last year was “the year the school board went nuts.” A new school board was trying to overthrow the old one and the staff didn’t get paid, so she left.
She then moved to Chennai, India, to teach for another two years. She loved teaching at the school and loved the subcontinent in general, despite the lower school’s building being bombed early on the first day of school by the Tamil Tigers, a militant organization that started the Sri Lankan Civil War.
Next up was four years in Peru. She intended to stay just four years in Shanghai as well, but it’s been 14 years and she still loves it.
Ms. Cessna seems to be one of those teachers you either like or don’t; there’s not much middle ground. She thinks most students lean toward the latter.
“I'm probably one of those teachers they appreciate more later on,” she said after a pause. “Take for instance, the last time I taught AP English Lit. We did six major works. For each one of those, I made them do a research paper. It was 600-1000 words, roughly three pages plus a bibliography, and you know how I am with that.”
For anyone who hasn’t been in Ms. Cessna’s class before, let’s just say she takes points off if you have one space too few or if your quotation marks are straight and not curved in.
“So the grades were pretty low on that first one,” she admitted, “but by the sixth one, I hardly had to open up my red ink pen because they were getting ’em so close to being perfect.”
“Then they go off—almost all of them were seniors,” she said. “The next year, Christmas time, one of them came back to visit. She came in and said, ‘I just wanted to be sure and stop in to say thank you.’ And I said, ‘Thank you...?’
“And she said, ‘I don’t know if you realized it, but all of us hated you last year for making us do all of those stupid research papers, but now that I’m in university, we’re expected to do that all the time. I know what to do, and it’s easy for me. But I look at my roommate, who is actually in tears, crying because she doesn’t know what to do. She doesn’t even know enough to know what to ask.’”
She paused, letting the story sink in.
“So, that’s what makes me think that, which I’m perfectly fine with,” Ms. Cessna said. “I will be friendly, but I’m not here to be your friend. It would be inappropriate. I’m here to teach you, and that’s a little bit different.”
Ms. Cessna isn’t planning on retiring soon and hopes to teach for about another six years, until she’s 70 years old.
“Which means that I have to go some place else to do it,” she said with a shrug. “I would like to stay here, but Shanghai has an age restriction on work visas. I cannot come back even for next year—unless the school does the paperwork to get around that age restriction, like they do for Mr. Green, the orchestra teacher. So far they’ve been not willing to do that, so I am currently finding a job for next year.”
As it turns out, she will not be returning to SAS next year. She’s looking to stay in Asia, possibly international schools in Beijing, Taiwan, or Korea.
“After I retire, I would like to go back to university and study philosophy and architecture,” she said. “For a lot of universities in Illinois, once you get to 65 and beyond, they allow you to audit classes. You buy the books, but you don’t have to pay tuition, write the papers, or do the exams. You’re just there for the good parts of class.
“I’d also like to get into some kind of community service work, but I’m not sure what that’s going to be. Odds are very likely it’ll have something to do with politics.”
Talk about lifelong learning. Ms. Cessna doesn’t even plan on leaving school when she retires, after 29 years of teaching.
Her ruthless red pen may indicate she’s strict and serious, her bibliography rants may make you think she’s boring, but sometimes it’s easy to forget teachers are living, breathing humans with an intricate life of their own.
Ms. Cessna had her “rebel” days when she was a student—or as rebellious as a good kid who loves school can get. She’s experienced her fair share of adventure and travel, and she has aspirations beyond just what she teaches.
Next time you go to her for help with MLA, ask her what she thinks of the latest political development or how it was like to teach in Peru. This spotlight article may have been super long, but it cannot even come close to summarizing who someone is.
Emma Li
