Schools
Jefferson Center Teacher of the Year to Retire after a 26-Year Career
Jefferson Center teacher Beverly Friedenberg will retire from teaching, but not from her identity as a teacher.
It's morning at the and seven students are gathered around Beverly Friedenberg. Some interested, some not. When she notices she has lost some of her audience, she calls the class to attention and continues on, reading the week’s new vocabulary words.
“Sparse” she said. “So, do you know what I mean when I say my husband’s hair is now sparse?”
As a teacher, Friedenberg, 64, fulfills many roles in her student’s lives. Teacher, cheerleader, mother, counselor, coach, and sometimes, after graduation, some students are able to call her friend.
“Genial,” said Jefferson Center student Simona Miller, 17, thinking of one word to describe Friedenberg. “(She has) a very genial personality.”
Among colleagues, Friedenberg has gained a reputation as a no nonsense type of teacher.
“She uses a consistent formula that emphasizes vocabulary. Her presentations, no matter what the content area, use material from all disciplines,” said Jefferson Center counselor Gretchen Mahoney, who started her time in alternative education with Friedenberg. “Nobody has more seniority than we do.”
Freedenberg also has a rep with the students, mainly because of her infamous vocabulary quizzes.
“This is my first quarter having (Friedenberg) and I just knew her name from the tests I saw from other students,” said Jefferson Center student Dalante Hence, 17. “It was a challenge because I am used to knowing the work easily. She helped me expand my vocabulary.”
After 26 years in the education, Friedenberg will retire from teaching at end of the year but she said she would always be a teacher. It's her identity, she said.
“Teaching is not only my vocation but my avocation,” said Friedenberg. “I am having a lot of conflict (with retiring). It’s a life change, a major life change.”
Friedenberg, who was recognized as , started her career at Detroit's Cooley High School teaching a teen mother program. After she left Cooley in 1973 to have children of her own, she returned to education in Ferndale to teach the teen parent class at the former alternative education site at St. James Church. “It was a labor of love but a pain at the same time," she said. "They were so needy, and so young, and so vulnerable. And everything is decked against them.”
Although there was a change of cities, Friedenberg said she faced the same struggles teaching in Ferndale, as she did in Detroit. “It was a little more concentrated in Ferndale because it was an alternative program so they were all higher risk kids. The risks were higher but the rewards were greater, so it balances out.”
And after more than two decades in education, Friedenberg said she would take away many rewards.
“I think the fact that in alternative education program we take many times kids that everybody else has given up on and we lose, we do lose. But the wins are all the sweeter," she said, pulling out pictures of former students she refers to as "her kids."
"The ones that everyone said would never graduate, they go on to college and I see them all over. And I have been able to keep in touch with them," she said.
Friedenberg said the demands of alternative education programs require a stronger support system that the staff at Jefferson Center fulfills terrifically.
"Things happen but eventually everyone wakes up," said Friedenberg. "You have to give people a chance. … There has to be a place where these kids can be where they feel safe, where if there is somebody we can help, we can help. I think teaching can be the most rewarding career in the world."
