Retiring Needham Elementary School first grade teacher Jill Snyder, with a collection of Hello Kitty merchandise students gave to her during her career.
Submitted photo
She arrived in Franklin four decades ago to pursue a degree in education and she never left.
Generations of students remember Jill Snyder as their first-grade teacher at Needham Elementary School, where she taught for 33 years before retiring this spring. She also spent the previous three years at Webb Elementary School, splitting time between first and second-grade classrooms. Her journey into elementary education started just a couple miles away at Franklin College, Snyder said.
“My father was a math teacher. I was going to follow in his footsteps, but after taking college-level math courses I decided to be an elementary school teacher,” she said. “I’ve always enjoyed children and growing up with a father who was in education, it seemed like something that would be a good thing to do. It was a natural transition.”
Throughout her career, Snyder had to adapt to new technology, going from having to crank up a copy machine to having students know more about the Chromebooks they use than she does. She also had to adapt to changes in curriculum, she said.
“I’m not sure what I expected when I first started but I just had to evolve. The curriculum changes and students change and in my 33 years (at Needham), there’s been quite a pendulum of things that have evolved and changed,” Snyder said. “I grew so much as a teacher. I would love to go back to the first couple of years and redo them, not in the information I taught, but the understanding of their brains.”
Snyder learned teaching is not just about making sure students know the content, but making sure they find their time in school fulfilling, she said.
“I’m very traditional. I feel like I’m not a hard-nosed disciplinarian, but my students know what they can get away with and what they can’t. I’m pretty structured, but I’m flexible. You have to be flexible when you’re an elementary school teacher,” she said. “Every student is different in their learning style and the home they’re coming from. You have to be able to change to meet their needs, whether they’re academic or emotional.”
As a first-grade teacher, Snyder was able to teach both math and literacy skills.
“I always loved math, I thought it would be my favorite thing to teach, but teaching reading is an amazing experience. I would say it’s my most enjoyable subject. They have an ‘a-ha’ moment when they apply it, like how ‘safe’ has a hard ‘f’ so it’s ‘safe’ and not ‘saf.’ I hope they learned they could do hard things. I think in this day and age it’s easy to give up, but you can do hard things. Reading is fun, and they were loved and taken care of in Room 20.”
During her time at Needham, Snyder grew fond of various traditions, such as field day and the Kindy 500, when kindergartners would build makeshift racecars out of boxes to race in a circle in front of the school. But one of her favorite memories stems from Hello Kitty, she said.
“When McDonald’s put Hello Kittys in Happy Meals, I told them I liked them and the students brought them to me,” Snyder said. “I had over 200 Hello Kittys. I had them in the doorway, in windows, even from kids who didn’t have me. I had Hello Kitty blankets and jewelry and they would make me ceramic Hello Kittys. I gave away a lot when I retired and kids took them if they wanted to. I kept a few for my granddaughters to play with.”
Snyder now looks back on a career built by the relationships she sustained through four principals and generations of students.
“The kids are awesome,” she said. “When you’re six, you have great ideas. Their little minds are like little sponges, they soak what goes on at home and at school, so I feel like teaching is an important profession. I learned patience, and just building relationships is important in life, with my students, with my coworkers. Relationships are important in general.”
