Robin Bratton receives a certificate in May noting her 35 years of service at Indian Creek schools as she retired.
Submitted photo
Before she ever set foot in the classroom, her path was set.
Longtime English teacher and media specialist Robin Bratton retired this spring after 37 years in education, 35 of which she spent at Indian Creek High School. Her dream to be a teacher started when she was a young girl, when was inspired by family members who worked in education, she said.
“I just always loved school and I had excellent teachers and role models. My mother was a teacher’s aide and my aunt was a teacher and my sister became a teacher. I just always saw myself in that role,” Bratton said. “I remember reading in high school, a book called ‘Up the Down Staircase’ and watching ‘To Sir, with Love’ and I thought I was meant to be in the classroom helping kids.”
After serving as a substitute teacher, she decided to make the leap into full-time teaching, first at Hamilton Junior/Senior High School and then at Indian Creek High School, where she taught English for 15 years before serving as the media specialist for the next 20.
“I felt I had the kind of character where I would mesh well with high school kids, there’s a fun element to it and I enjoyed trying to keep my classes fun and enjoyable for them,” Bratton said. “I enjoyed their humor and seeing them blossom into adults. Oftentimes students, especially the girls, would ask for advice and I would try to give that to them as best I could and I cared for them.”
Bratton most enjoyed teaching Shakespeare, and got creative to make his plays and sonnets more relatable for students, she said.
“I really enjoyed teaching Shakespeare. It seemed like a foreign language to students, but I hope I was able to put it into modern terms for them and help them decipher that language and poetry into something they could understand,” Bratton said. “At the very end, I would allow them to do slow-move sword fights. It was something silly and lighthearted, but they would look forward to getting up in front of the class with wrapping paper tubes for swords. It sounds funny but they loved it so much.”
Along with fostering an appreciation for literature, Bratton also enjoyed helping students become better writers, she said.
“I had them sit down and write whatever they could about (a topic) in their own experience and take that as a springboard,” Bratton said. “I worked with them on research and how to put that together succinctly and correctly, so if they went on to college, they would have those skills and they wouldn’t have to learn them in college.”
As a media specialist, she taught students proper research techniques so they could ensure accuracy. She was also able to thrive in the role with her love of books.
“I would go into classrooms and work with them on MLA style and citations and plagiarism. It was still right down my alley with English, plus all the literature I got to enjoy and promote,” Bratton said. “One of my favorite things is having students come back to me and say ‘thank you for recommending that book, it’s my favorite,’ or one student saying ‘this book changed my life, it made me a better person for reading it.’”
Those two books were “The Alchemist” by Paulo Coelho and ‘The Perks of Being a Wallflower” by Stephen Chbosky, she said.
Bratton will miss the connections she was able to spark during her career, she said.
“I’ll miss my students, I’ll miss my colleagues, I’ll miss the creativity that it took to be a teacher and a librarian,” Bratton said. “I’ll have to find different outlets for that, but I think as close as I am with some of my teachers and friends, I’ll still be in touch with them. But I’ll miss the students and the activity of being an educator.”
Now, she’ll turn her attention to her granddaughter and her husband. She met her husband, Marshall Bratton, when they were both attending Indiana University Bloomington. This year he also retired after teaching for 35 years at Greenwood Community High School. In retirement, they’ll be able to spend more time together, she said.
“We hope to do some traveling, and of course, I’ll continue reading,” she said. “I will have my own reading list I’ve been putting off, not having time for it. That will be exciting for me as well as the traveling and being a little more free to do those things with Marshall.”
