Terri Haywood
ACP Special Education education teacher 17 years MSHS, 37 total
XC Coach for 36 years
Q: How has your job changed since working here?
A: Well, just lately, it’s hit me like AI and how easy teaching is becoming, even the internet, you can just type something in and it’s there.
And you can see, just here by my desk, how old I am, because I have folders with worksheets in it. You know, that I’ve had for years.
When I first came, I didn’t, we didn’t even have a computer. You know, so that’s the only way you got things was to ask other people.
You looked through magazines and stuff like that to find. So that’s changed a lot, just the way you plan and gain materials.
Q: In what ways have things really NOT changed?
A: Students haven’t changed very much. I don’t think, over time, different problems at different times. Phones have made a big change, I think.
Q: What do people not fully understand about your job here?
A: “I don’t think they fully understand what we do. I don’t think that they know sometimes that ACP is our own classroom.
We teach everything from English to science, social studies, math, all of it.
Q: What kind of part-time jobs have you worked in while in college or even while working full-time in education?
A: “In college I worked at a gas station. It was a great job, because I got to do homework, because I worked until 11 o’clock, so from 9 to 11, there was nobody around. So that was a good one.
I worked at a shoe store. That was one of my favorite jobs. It was one of the old fashioned, come in, sit you down, try on the shoes. And it was a lot of older people. [Management] taught you how to, like, manipulate the situation a little. People would be like, ‘Oh, it hurts my foot over here.’
So he’d go, Let me go and ease that out for your little bit. And we had these little stretchers. And sometimes you’d use them.
But sometimes you’d just flip the shoe around a couple times and they were like, ‘oh, I feel so much better.’ So it was just kind of a fun little mind game of how to get people to buy things.”
“I worked at a few fast food. I worked at Kmart. That’s how I met my husband.”
Q: If you weren’t a teacher, what other career was a close runner-up you were considering when you were a young person our age or during college?
A: “I wanted to be a teacher since about 3rd grade. A couple things contributed that. I had really good teachers, third, fourth, and 5th grade. I saw a movie once about a special ed student and that did something for me, and I wanted to be a teacher ever since.
Q: What was the movie called? I
A: “It was called Son Rise.”
Q: What are you going to miss most?
A: “I’m going to, of course, miss the kids and cross country. That’s a whole group of kids, and then I have my special ed students, and that’s a whole different group of kids. So, just working with them, but I’m gonna miss planning. I know that seems really strange, but I like using my brain for planning things out, and I’m really good at it.
And so that’s the part I’m going to miss, and that I’m worried about, that how am I going to use my brain?”
Q: What are you planning to do in retirement?
A: “Some online curriculum writing of some sort would be exactly what I would like.”
“I don’t have much plan yet. We camp all summer, so I know I’ll be okay this summer and into the fall. Next winter, it might get to do a little traveling. I have a bucket list.
It’s a weird bucket list, but glacier this summer, ‘cause I want to see that, so that’s my first little thing.”
Graduated from North Platte High School
Undergraduate at UNK when it was still Kearney State, before it was in the UN system
Transferred to UNO following my husband from Kearney to Omaha
Undergraduate from UNO
Masters from UNO
