Over the 50 consecutive years that Terry Sims has been a teacher at Madison Elementary School, he estimates he taught around 4,000 students.
One day while Sims was at Menards shopping, a young man in line told him that because of the electrical unit he taught in fourth grade, the young man never forgot anything Sims taught or showed him. The young man was going to have an apprenticeship the following fall because Sims generated the interest in him to want to do that.
Another former student wrote him a letter in high school to tell Sims, “I know you’re a human being and I know that when you go home at night, you have problems, but you never brought those problems into your classroom. I know there were days you probably didn’t feel like teaching, but you were always positive, you always joked around and we never knew if there was anything wrong.”
Sims said it’s moments like those that are very touching to him.
Born in Terre Haute, he lost his father to cancer when he was 14.
“I went out and got a job (at McDonald’s) and lied about my age to help my family. It was the only place that would hire young kids. I told them I was 16 and I was 14 - I looked 12,” Sims said in an interview in his fourth-grade classroom at Madison on Wednesday.
He worked at McDonald’s all the way through high school, graduating from Wiley High School in Terre Haute in 1970. The school - which used to be the Indiana State Teachers College - no longer exists. Sims worked late nights, sometimes getting off at 1 or 2 a.m. and then going to school a few hours later.
After graduating high school with a class of around 400 students, Sims struggled with making up his mind with what he wanted to do. He registered at ISU, telling the counselor they gave him that he wanted to be a teacher. The counselor set him up for entry courses.
Sims also went and saw his high school counselor to tell her what his college plans were. She discouraged him from going, telling him she didn’t think it was for him.
“That really motivated me. So I went to Indiana State and I decided to go to summer school to get a jump on it. My first class was freshman English, and I got an ‘A’ in it, so I immediately photocopied the grade and sent it to her, the counselor. That was the first thing I did,” Sims recalled.
While taking college course, he continued working at McDonald’s. In the beginning, he only worked weekends at 50 cents an hour, but eventually got bumped up to the regular crew. Once he began the regular school year at ISU, he told McDonald’s he was serious about his education and wasn’t going to have long hours, and they gave him more day hours.
“In the meantime, my mother was getting checks from Social Security for $200 a month for me. So she said, ‘I will pay your tuition, but you have to pay for your books.’ And that sounded like a good deal until I went to the bookstore,” he said.
A book for his art appreciation class was $35 then, which would be at least three times that today. Sims and two others shared the cost of one book to share.
After getting through all of his classes, his grades were just a little above average.
“But I really wasn’t where I wanted to be yet. I mean, I was taking classes I had to take, and I wasn’t as serious as I should have been, but once I got into my Methods courses for teaching and things like that, I took the bull by the horn and I worked really hard on that,” Sims said.
He said ISU has a really good teaching program, noting that’s where Warsaw Community Schools Superintendent Dr. David Hoffert got his doctorate.
“I went through student teaching and they told me they would prefer I not teach in Terre Haute, not because I had a reputation, but they said sometimes it’s easier to teach where nobody knows you. So they sent me to Brazil, Indiana,” Sims said.
He had a split assignment at the small school for his student teaching - half a semester teaching intermediate, half teaching primary. He taught fourth-, fifth- and sixth-grade reading, and had a “really great” supervising teacher. When he taught first grade for eight weeks, he learned “what life is really like” and has admired primary teachers ever since.
“It was a really good experience for me. I was very popular because not many males - back then - were (teachers),” Sims said.
After finishing down there, he came up to Warsaw for an interview at the strong suggestion of his supervisor. Sims had never heard of Warsaw at that point.
“I drove up here and talked with the assistant superintendent who was in charge of personnel at that time, and after my interview he said he was going to send me to Madison, the principal there, and if he wants you, we’ll hire you,” he recalled.
Sims interviewed with Principal William Farrar. “He was like a father figure to me. I was 21 and scared to death,” he said, and Farrar talked to him for 1-1/2 hours.
Sims’ roommate at the time also interviewed for the Madison job and told Sims he was going to get it. The next day Sims received a phone call offering him the job if he could come up the next day and sign a contract.
“I got the job here. I got a commitment from Warsaw that they wouldn’t release me unless it’s a performance issue,” he said. He was taking Barb Swanson’s place at the school because she was going on a maternity leave. Sims was told he was in, and while Swanson was guaranteed a position after her maternity leave, she wasn’t guaranteed the same position. “So the rest is history. It was 1974 and the first week of January I started.”
The exact date Sims began his 50-year career at Madison was Jan. 7, 1974.
“I remember walking in the door, we had 100 fourth-graders in that class at the old Madison. Honestly, they had kids in the bleachers, they had them on the stage, they had them anywhere they could put them because they didn’t have room. We had 650 kids (enrolled) at that time, and Mr. Farrar was a great manager. He knew how to manage that many kids. I don’t know if anybody can do that now,” Sims said.
For about his first dozen years, Sims taught fourth grade. When an opening in sixth grade became open, Sims took it. He taught sixth grade for 10 years, along with Doug Hoffert and Jerry Ryman.
“I loved working with them,” Sims said.
When the school downsized for some reason, then-Principal Jeff Neumann said one of the three sixth-grade teachers had to go to another grade level. Sims volunteered and moved back to fourth grade where he’s taught ever since.
“The longer I stayed here, the more I was committed to staying here. I made some really important relationships over time, over 50 years. I can’t even tell you how many (teaching) partners I’ve had. Probably 10 or 15 partners over that time,” he said.
After six years, Sims got tenure - which no longer exists - and he decided to get active in the teachers association, becoming a building representative.
That year, there was a vote for a strike at the Presbyterian Church because things weren’t going well, he said. At the last second, there was a settlement and the teachers went back to work. Two years later, with Sims on the negotiation team, it happened again over money.
“I was making $7,200 a year. So I was bringing home $180 a paycheck, which is $95 a week after taxes. I had to live on that. I worked at a gas station part time,” Sims recalled.
It was settled again at the last minute, but there were a lot of hard feelings over it, he said.
In 1990, the teachers association disaffiliated from the state union, the ISTA-NEA. Then-Warsaw Community High School teacher Jack Musgrave told Sims he was needed to be the president of the Warsaw Community Education Association. Sims agreed to do it for a year, but he’s been president ever since.
“So I’m the longest-serving president of the association,” he stated.
When he started as president, Dr. Lee Harman was superintendent of WCS. Even though Harman and Sims had a “really intense relationship,” they also became really close friends.
After Harman retired, WCS had a number of superintendents until Hoffert came along. Hoffert had been one of the teachers association officers and the vice president under Sims for a while when he was teaching at WCHS. Hoffert then left to become an administrator at Wabash, before returning to Warsaw for an administrator position.
“When (Hoffert) interviewed for the superintendent’s job, they actually asked us for our input, the association’s input, so I was on that committee. They said what do you think of Dr. Hoffert? And I said, ‘If you don’t hire him, he’s a local man, and you are crazy if you don’t hire him.’ They said a lot of people having been saying that, and I said because it’s true. He’s very truthful and he just wants to make things work,” Sims said. “We’ve had a great relationship ever since then.”
Hoffert, a WCHS graduate, said he’s known Sims since 2002 when he returned to Warsaw as a teacher. He’s got to know him through the teachers association.
“I have the utmost respect for him as a mentor, colleague and friend,” Hoffert said, adding that they’ve worked hand-in-hand over the last 10 years with him being the superintendent and Sims being the president of the teachers association.
“He is the most dedicated educator I’ve ever known,” Hoffert said. “Fifty years in the classroom is very unique in today’s society. There’s very few Terry Sims out there who love their profession, love the kids and love coming to work every day.”
Hoffert said in today’s world, people often change profession after every few years, so Sims being in the same profession with the same school is abnormal.
He’s never had another teacher who has taught for over 50 years, though some teachers have taught for over 40 years and there’s been some bus drivers who hit the 35-year mark or more.
Sims has “an incredible wisdom about him and knowledge and you can just tell when you walk into his classroom that his students love and respect him. We’re blessed to have him,” Hoffert stated.
Being his 50th teaching year, Sims, 71, said he doesn’t know how many more he’ll do. His wife, Beth, who also taught at Madison, retired after over 35 years when she was 78. They’ve been married for around 34 years.
“The length of time I’ve taught isn’t the thing that I feel I should be recognized for, as much as how hard I’ve worked, the relationships I’ve worked to get and how much I love the kids. It’s unusual for an elementary teacher to hear from former students, it’s more likely to happen in high school. But I’ve had two or three incidents, just within the last year, that have really moved me,” he said.