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Published Sunday, January 22, 2012 in Local

Photo by Bob Fraley

During her 50 years at Newnan High School, Barbara Landreth has inspired generations of students in Room 106.

Newnan High's Barbara Landreth inspires generations of Cowetans

By REBECCA LEFTWICH

rebecca@newnan.com

Drop the name "Barbara Landreth" in any Coweta County crowd, and chances are someone will have a story.

During her 50 years at Newnan High School, Landreth has inspired students to become anything from writers to teachers. But those who chose other paths also benefited from their time in Classroom 106.

"The bottom line is, Mrs. Landreth sets the bar extremely high," Dr. Doug Moore, principal of Newnan High School, said. "She has high expectations for her students not just academically, but also behavior-wise."

Moore should know. He once was her student.

"Through elementary school, junior high school and high school, and then through nine years of college, I couldn't tell you where I sat in any other classroom," Moore said. "But I sat in the second row in the second chair of Mrs. Landreth's class."

Landreth has had enormous impact on her students through the years, and Moore's job as administrator at the school he once attended gives him constant access to her wealth of knowledge.

"To come back and be supervisor over teachers who taught you is unusual," Moore said. "But the thing about Mrs. Landreth is that she is so supportive of our school board, the superintendent and the administration of Newnan High School. We have had many talks about the direction of education, and she is such a big help to me in big and little things."

Still, Moore admits he is a little more cheeky now than he would have dared risk as a junior English student.

"I kid her about being in charge sometimes," he said. "She assures me she has no desire to make any of those decisions."

Newnan High is peppered with former students who have come back to teach alongside Landreth.

"Barbara is extremely supportive as a colleague," said science teacher Ellen Adams, who also considers Landreth a friend. "She gave my oldest child several books when she was little that we still treasure."

Adams' favorite moments in junior English class were Landreth's memorable lectures on writing.

"She would type up papers with sentences that were less than stellar from our assignments," Adams said. "She didn't put names on them, and they were a pretty funny and memorable way to talk about good and bad writing."

Her innovative teaching style and adaptability have kept Landreth relevant in Classroom 106.

"Students have a lot of opportunities to be successful," Moore said. "From a practical standpoint, the way she teaches may have changed with the needs of students. The state and federal departments of education are continually changing what they require of us, but she has always made sure her methods are firmly based in student success."

On that point, Moore can speak with authority not just as a principal but as a student. He says he still uses his ability to diagram sentences -- learned in Landreth's class -- to write correctly. And Landreth is pretty handy with a red pen decades later.

"I asked her to help me proofread my dissertation," he said. "Here we are working on my doctoral project. I've been through a lot of classes to help me prepare for it, but when it comes down to it, she still helped me with commas and subject-verb agreement. It was humbling.

"I was extremely proud of the one page out of 145 pages typed that didn't have any correction," Moore added with a chuckle.

And even after 50 years, Landreth isn't afraid to try something new. She has been yearbook sponsor for as many years as she's taught at Newnan, and the school's yearbook has finally gone totally online.

"We were one of the last ones still being cut and pasted by hand," Moore said. "Her concern was that she didn't lose the quality of having her hands on every item that went in the yearbook, so that everything was perfect. But she was willing to learn to do it online."

Being willing to learn may have been Landreth's trick to being a good teacher all these years.

"She's always willing to revisit assessment methods," Moore said. "It's a trend seen often in some of our modern education gurus. Under different principals, with different mandates, her methods have held consistent all these years."

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Love this Lady.

1/25/2012