Principal Larimore retiring after 35 years

By Mike Ford, The Delphos Herald
Published:  Friday, May 15, 2009 (10 months ago)
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Franklin Elementary Principal Tim Larimore will retire at the end of this school year after 35 years in education. Above: He and teacher Kathy Buettner discuss students.DELPHOS — As students begin thinking about summer vacation, a few veteran educators prepare for retirement with much reflection on their careers. One such person is Franklin Elementary School Principal Tim Larimore.
After 35 years as a middle school teacher, coach and principal, Larimore will retire after the end of the academic year. He invested those years with an emphasis on students and teachers.He compares various grade levels and how teaching has changed in general.
“I started in August 1974, as a sixth-grade teacher at Bath. I was there for 16 years; I spent the first eight in sixth grade and the other eight and a half as a seventh-grade math teacher. I also coached basketball and golf there. I left Bath in January 1991, when I made the jump from teaching to administration. I was the assistant principal at Elida Middle School for six and a half years and left there in Spring 1997 and came to Franklin, so I’ve been the principal here for 12 years,” he said.
Larimore has no vocational plans for the immediate future but leaves Delphos City Schools knowing he has kept a strong group of teachers intact at Franklin.
“When I came here, there was a staff of veteran teachers in place and my job was to find someone just as good when a teacher retired. I think I’ve done a pretty good job of that based on the group of teachers we have here and based on our test scores,” he said. “When the board hired me 12 years ago, I told them I would make decisions based on what was best for the kids and this has been my philosophy of education. My managing style has been to surround myself with the best teachers and make sure they have the supplies and resources they need to do their job, then stay out of their way and let them do it. I don’t micromanage.”
He credits the school’s success to parents as well.
“My 12 years here have been wonderful; the parental and community support here is wonderful. People here care very much and want the schools to succeed. They have always been right here behind us. I will miss the daily interaction with students the most, as well as daily interaction with the teachers, but I am looking forward to retirement,” he said.
Larimore is now 57 years old and said he was not ready to retire at the 30-year mark in his career. However, he knew he was ready when he attended a family wedding in Florida and was not able to stay longer because he had to return to work.
“I was sitting out in the sun with a book and thought to myself ‘If I were retired, I wouldn’t have to get on the plane tomorrow’ and that’s when I knew,” he said.
Larimore recalls shifting from middle school to elementary and says one of the biggest differences is students’ behavior. He greatly appreciates being able to make a positive impact on Franklin students because of their age level and good-natured temperament.
“I enjoyed the middle school kids but they’re at an age when they want to be treated as adults but behave as children. When I came here, I had no elementary experience but I enjoy elementary kids the most. They’re a lot of fun; they hug you, write you notes and when they have their holiday classroom parties, they bring you treats,” he said.
Though children are much the same in any generation, educating them has changed throughout Larimore’s career.
“The curriculum has changed over the years I’ve been here. Things we taught in first grade 12 years ago are now taught in kindergarten. Kids coming into kindergarten now need to have some basic reading and adding and subtracting skills. They also need to be able to sit still and listen to instruction. They need to come into kindergarten ready to learn, whereas it used to be just a social time,” he said.
Larimore says a lot of parents think kindergarten is similar to what it was when they were children and sometimes want to start a child before he or she is really ready.
“Kindergarten is a child’s first impression of school and first impressions can last a lifetime. I want every child to have a positive first impression of school and if they struggle, their self-esteem could be negatively affected and there could be some behavioral changes from that. All children mature at different rates, so if parents are in doubt about enrolling them into kindergarten, they should wait because it will not hurt them,” he said.
Larimore has both fond and funny memories of his career.
“One of the neatest things that has ever happened to me was getting invited to the wedding of a former sixth grade student at Bath. I also had another former student who was assigned to write an essay on the person who had the greatest impact on his life and wrote it about me. Then, the first year I was here at Franklin, I played tooth fairy for a student; I  wrote a little note,” he recalled.
He also remembers a student running in the main corridor at Elida Middle School, heading for the front door and a teacher yelling at him to stop the child. Larimore called to the student to stop running but he would not, so Larimore did what had to be done.
“I tackled him like a football player. My daughter was a student at the time and was in the lunchroom, which was near where I tackled him. When she was older, she told me there had been some boys who weren’t quite sure if they wanted to date her or not because they remembered me tackling that student,” he said.
Larimore remembers a time when if a teacher had difficulty with a student, he or she could simply call the parents. Cultural changes have had a ripple-affect.
“I can’t just pick up the phone and call them anymore. Now, I have to check the records to see if the parent has the same last name as the student. Homes in which the student lives with both birth-parents are the minority,” he said.
That isn’t the only thing that has changed.
“When I was at Bath, we took the kids on a three-day outdoor education experience to Camp Wilson in Bellefontaine. We did science experiments and things like that and they stayed in cabins like dorm rooms. That was fun because they got to see us in a different way and we got to see them in a less formal setting. That was a time before achievement tests,” he said.
Government mandates have schools on such a short leash that they would not be able to do such a thing these days.
“Back then, schools had more flexibility. So much today is based on the testing. That’s the only thing I will not miss — the things that come down from either Columbus or Washington, D.C.,” he said.
Larimore says the standards are not the issue, but how they are implemented. He would prefer the same group of students be tracked as it advances from one grade to the next. As it is, this year’s second graders, for example, are compared to last year’s second graders and Larimore has some concerns about this.
“We should be held to a high standard but they should compare apples to apples, not apples to oranges. No two kids are the same; no two groups of kids are the same; and no two school years are the same. My lesson plans were never the same two years in a row because they’re different kids and what you do in the classroom one year may not work the next year,” he said.