By: Kayla Del Rosario
Jennifer Lehman was the sort of person who lived to teach. It gave her such joy to guide the minds of young people whom some other teachers might only see as immature or disobedient. I was her student for the first three years of high school, and she once told me, “I hate hanging out with people my own age. They’re so boring! Young people are much more interesting.” She saw the unique potential in each and every one of her students and somehow managed to nurture and care for every one of them. I don’t know if she’ll ever know how much that meant to us.
Ms. Lehman attended Scripps College in Claremont, California, and taught at Rincon Valley Middle School in Honors English, Latin, reading, and musical theater. She also taught English at Ursuline High School and English and Latin at Montgomery High School, and finally taught only zero-period Latin at Montgomery. She died on September 11, 2020, at the age of 77.
When Susan Farkas, an English teacher at Montgomery High School, met her, she had just survived Stage IV colon cancer. Ms. Farkas was a student teacher at the time. She remembers that she came early every morning to begin Latin class at 7:00 am with “a room full of kids, and, you know, here’s a woman who’s battling colon cancer . . . who was just inviting, and happy, and just so--she was so full of life." Despite having health issues for many years as a result of her cancer, still “she made it to school every morning, with vigor, and she was a positive person." Ms. Farkas was “absolutely amazed by her positivity, and how welcoming and warm she was."
It especially stuck with Ms. Farkas that every year on the first day of school, Ms. Lehman would say to her students, “Everyone has an A right now. All you have to do is keep it." Ms. Farkas says, “It struck me not only as incredibly welcoming and positive, but true." I definitely remember Ms. Lehman telling our class this. Because she was my zero period teacher, her class was the first class I had on my first day of high school. I was incredibly nervous and unsure of what to expect. This simple phrase that she said to my classmates and I let me know that no matter what I experienced at Montgomery, I would always have at least one teacher who was rooting for me, and who knew I could do well.
Ms. Farkas also remembers that Ms. Lehman spent the first twenty minutes of every Latin class talking about things that weren’t related to Latin at all. Ms. Farkas says, “I loved that she did that. I loved the fact that you had this person of another generation . . . who’s lived a lot of life, talking to people who are really just starting out in life, soon to be adults, with the wisdom that she would have. Sometimes that’s not always easy to listen to when you’re a kid, because there’s so many things that you all know a lot more about than we do--the Internet, for example. But her wisdom was timeless. I loved that she did that. I loved that you guys would listen to her." I also remember all of our before-class conversations. Ms. Lehman was interesting and funny, and even though we were studying Latin texts that were thousands of years old, the class was never boring. She would tell us funny stories or joke about the characters in our books. One time, she told us that her favorite word was defenestration, which is the act of throwing someone out of a window. It stuck with me because it was so hilarious and random. Other times, she gave us more serious life advice and told us how to handle problems we might encounter. For me and many of her students, our first class of the day wasn’t just a place where we went to learn about Latin. It was also a place where we could talk with a teacher who could look beyond the lesson and guide us through our lives.
When Chris Schloemp, an English and drama teacher, first met Ms. Lehman, she was his mentor during his first job as a new teacher. After his job interview, he says she “took the new teachers, and she showed us around the school, and she gave us tips for our first couple of weeks of class, and just made us feel really comfortable and at home, and she made it okay to make mistakes in that first year . . . She took care of all of [us], and she kept doing that for me." For Mr. Schloemp, Ms. Lehman was a guide and role model. He was “really nervous” in his first year as a teacher, but says she “made me feel like it was okay to try out ideas that were still wrong. I didn’t feel like I had to impress her. I just had to be honest with her . . . She had a way of giving you feedback in such a way that it would lead you to the right answer . . . but that you discovered it instead of her just telling it to you." She “had wisdom and experience to give, and she was always very generous with it . . . I always felt I could go to Jennifer for help."
In addition to teaching drama, Mr. Schloemp is also an actor himself. Ms. Lehman attended all of his shows until her health problems prevented her from sitting down for long periods of time. But even though it was difficult for her, she came to all of the shows that Mr. Scholemp directed at Montgomery High School. “She came to every single one--didn’t miss any of them."
When Paul Van Tuyl, an English and Theory of Knowledge teacher, met Ms. Lehman, his first impression of her was that she was “really cool, just this old, kooky English teacher who didn’t get around much." He remembers, “We clicked right away." Van Tuyl, like Mr. Schloemp and so many other teachers, also looked up to Ms. Lehman. He says that when anyone was having trouble, “we could go to her. And she had been at Montgomery so long, and through so many administrations, and through so many department chairs, and done so many WASCS for us, she was the institutional knowledge of our campus. She knew everything. And she forgot nothing, ever . . . She was an encyclopedia that was just sitting at that little table [in Latin class], day in and day out, for decades." For Mr. Van Tuyl, “she is Montgomery."
It was Ms. Lehman’s way to take everyone she met underneath her wing and care for them. With the help of one of her friends, she cared for foster children. She took kids in when their parents kicked them out, and she drove many students to school events when they had no one else to take them. Every Friday, she would bring a box of donuts for our class. It was a small but kind gesture. Donut Fridays were a nice break from the craziness of school and we loved them. Ms. Farkas told me, “She had friends from all over Santa Rosa City Schools. She knows everybody. I wish I had more time with her so she could tell me everything she remembers."
When I spoke with him, Mr. Van Tuyl told me, “I will definitely miss her. I will miss her stabilizing influence, because I always knew that if I was at odds with whatever was going on in school, that if I came in the next morning and we talked it out, she would be there to help guide me in the right direction."
Ms. Farkas, Mr. Van Tuyl, and Mr. Schloemp all remember that Ms. Lehman was incredibly smart and sharp as well. Ms. Farkas even believes that if she had been born in a different time period, she might have chosen a career in academia. Mr. Van Tuyl and Ms. Lehman connected over their love for reading and knowledge. He remembers, “We would read just about anything. I would bring [a book] in to show her, and it had taken me forever to finish it . . . I think, realistically, it was probably read by about 0.25% of the population. And I give it to her, and she comes back to me the next week having finished it, of course, because that was just the way she was." Her favorite books were murder mystery novels, like those written by Agatha Christie.
In addition to caring for the adults around her, Ms. Lehman was also an incredibly supportive teacher. Her approach to teaching helped change the way that those around her approached their own classrooms. Mr. Van Tuyl says, “She helped me understand that we taught people. We didn’t teach a curriculum, we taught people how to interact with our curriculum. We had to get to these little adults first before they would come to us." He also remembers that “her philosophy of grading [students] and learning was based in how students learn, not in how professors think they learn. And I think that she was way ahead of her time, as far as understanding the way kids learned . . . she definitely changed the way I taught, that’s for sure."
Laurie Fong, a former teacher and school administrator, and a current member of the Santa Rosa City School District’s Board of Education, was also great friends with Ms. Lehman. She spent lots of time with her when she was vice principal and principal at Montgomery. She admired her teaching style and remembers that “her ideas about teaching were so advanced, in terms of how she reached kids, she related to kids, how she taught, and the strategies she used and what she thought about how kids learned.”
The law requires that every class have a limit of 33 students. Beyond that limit, the school has to pay the teacher for every extra student. There were many more students who wanted to take Latin than the school could afford to pay Ms. Lehman to teach, but she told Ms. Fong that it didn’t matter. She would teach any students who wanted to take Latin. The first year that I took Ms. Lehman’s Latin class, we had around 45 students in our class. There weren’t enough desks for all of us, and so many of us ended up sitting on the floor or jumping up on the countertops. But none of us complained because we enjoyed her class so much.
Ms. Lehman was able to handle all of these students because she split them into different levels of Latin. The levels were Latin 1, Latin 2, Latin 3, Honors Latin 3, Latin 4, IB Latin 1, and IB Latin 2. Because she was the only Latin teacher on campus, she was the only one who could teach all of those levels. She had different colors of paper for the students in each level, like gold, green, blue, purple, pink, tan, and white. Every morning, she would meet with each level at her desk at the front of the room, and would perfectly remember everything that each group was doing and have work ready for them on the corresponding color of paper. According to Mr. Schloemp, she was “really amazing at differentiating a classroom. To have that many levels all at the same time would drive most teachers crazy . . . it’s absurd."
Mr. Schloemp also marveled at how she managed her classroom. She wasn’t able to move around like most teachers because of her disabilities, but she still had perfect control over her class because all her students respected her so much. Mr. Schloemp says that her control lay in “her presence. . . She could make you recognize that you were doing something wrong and make you stop, just from sitting there. I can’t even imagine her writing a referral, that she would ever have to resort to that."
Ms. Lehman was masterful at both constantly pushing students to do their best while also letting them know that they were loved. Ms. Fong said to me, “I think Jennifer Lehman, of all the teachers I’ve ever known, [had] the highest expectations with the most unconditional support . . . she was brimming with love and care and smiles." Mr. Van Tuyl remembers that “she would treat people like they were human." Mr. Schloemp believes that teaching “was her calling. It was what she was meant to do. A lot of us teach to pay the bills, or to make a living or to support our families or to do those things, but we have other things that are our passion. I don’t think that was the case with her, which is why she retired so many times. She just couldn’t give it up. Her students were her world."
Ms. Lehman officially retired around the time when Mr. Van Tuyl started his job at Montgomery, after 39 years of being a teacher. When she retired, Mr. Van Tuyl says he knew that “she was going to teach until she died. I can’t imagine her sitting without doing what she was doing. I can’t imagine her going off and traveling the world and not coming back and bringing it into the classroom. She was a teacher. Some people do it as a job, some people live it. And I think she lived it, all the time. She lived to teach . . . her family really was the people in her classroom." After this first retirement, Mr. Schloemp remembers that “she was back that same fall. She wasn’t even gone a full year, either because she felt obligated to help her Latin students to get through . . . and then of course, the cycle keeps going and there’s always Latin students to get through. I think she just couldn’t ever get away, fully." She retired many times after her first retirement, but always returned. In total, she taught for another 18 years, meaning that her entire teaching career was 57 years long. Her last year of teaching was the 2019-2020 school year. During the years that I knew her, she fought through her health complications every single day, but she was always dignified. Like Mr. Schloemp said to me, “It didn’t stop her." My sophomore year, she became anemic and almost died in the hospital. But a week later, she was back in the classroom like nothing had happened. And in the last year that I knew her, it would take her thirty minutes every morning to walk from her car to her classroom. I always admired her incredible strength. She died as a result of her health problems, one day before her birthday and on a Donut Friday.
This piece was nearer to my heart than any other piece of writing that I’ve ever done. Like so many of the teachers that I spoke to, Ms. Lehman was a role model to me. Her resilience and the quiet dignity with which she carried herself inspired me daily. I knew her for the last three years of her life, but in those three years, she managed to make a huge impact on me. She was able to push you to work hard every single day, while still nurturing you and letting you know that you were loved and supported. My last year in her class, she let us know what our grades were at the end of the first semester by writing it on a notecard and handing it to us. On my notecard, she wrote me a short sentence praising me for my work. That short sentence meant more to me than any praise I’ve ever received from a teacher. I kept the notecard and still have it to this day.
Ms. Lehman treated every student she had like her own child. She knew that we each had the potential to accomplish great things, which I feel like some teachers today don’t convey to their students enough. Her belief in her students and our respect for her pushed us to reach the high standards that she expected of us.
I’m now a senior, and I hadn’t planned to take Latin this year. Around August 2020, I sent Ms. Lehman a text message telling her how much she meant to me. I never got to say goodbye to her because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Now I know that she was struggling with her health complications at the time that I sent her that text message, but I like to think that she received it and that it made her smile.
Because I’m applying to college this year, I asked Ms. Lehman to write me a letter of recommendation. She and I texted each other about it last summer, and she told me that she had written the letter but was still trying to send it through the college application website Common App. I tried to help her figure out how to send it, but I learned through my former teacher Ms. Farkas that Ms. Lehman, in her kindness and dedication, was still trying to figure out how to send my letter when she died. I still haven’t read the letter, although I would like to because she was such a special teacher to me.
Ms. Farkas emailed me the news that Ms. Lehman had died when I was in the middle of my Theory of Knowledge class. I was shocked and turned off my camera and cried. I was sad that she died, but I also cried because there were so many students that would never get to know her and be touched by her, and because the world had lost such a remarkable person.
At her memorial, it touched me how many people were there and shared how they had been deeply impacted by Ms. Lehman. She touched so many lives and changed them for the better. I believe that what makes a life meaningful is not how much money a person makes or how famous or successful they are. Instead, a life’s meaning depends on how many other lives it touched and how deeply it impacted them, and Jennifer Lehman’s life touched more people than any of us will ever know.
Ms. Farkas shared a beautiful analogy with me: “Someone told me years ago that teachers are like farmers, but farmers who have to leave right after they plant the crop. So, we see you all for a year sometimes, or four years when you’re in high school, and we throw the seeds down. But we never get to see the crop at the end, because you grow up and you have lives and careers, and whatever it is that you do in your lives. Whereas, I look at Jennifer, and just [in] the outpouring of love for her, I’m starting to see the crop: the people who are older and remember her, and remember her so fondly . . . I can’t help but think that there are a lot of wonderful, beautiful trees out there that Jennifer planted all those years ago that are strong . . . a lot because of what she did."
Ms. Lehman’s obituary can be found at Legacy.com at the link below, and anyone who wishes can share a memory that they have of her there.
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