mrs. rowen is my hero...well obviously there will be at least a dozen heros in the calendar by the time i'm done...but she is my hero. we managed to squeeze the session in between the end of the school day and her yoga class, so we couldn't get too much as far as interviewing done for learning her story. which is fine. the stories and the final images will not be released until the calendars hit the shelves anyway.
what i will tell you about Gerri is that she is a trooper in the true sense of the word. imagine battling breast cancer. imagine teaching junior high school art. now imagine doing them at the same time and keeping your sanity. i don't know how she does it, but let's face it: she did both well. cancer got the boot and her students love her. how could you not?
we did her session in the classroom, she told me that through the entire ordeal, the classroom kept things constant. it was a saving grace. she missed 5 days of school throughout her entire battle (for chemotherapy sessions). what better place to capture who she is as a person than in her classroom. she is a hero to me and she has been a hero to every student who has ever (begrudgingly or not) sat in her classroom.
thanks Gerri for being an inspiration and for being my mentor and department chair for three years at leota junior high.
- jason
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