Austintown teacher retires after 32 years in the district

By kristine gill

kgill@vindy.com

austintown

Judy Landy-Pearce’s second-grade students will be coming back to more than a new year after winter break. They also will have a new teacher.

Landy-Pearce, 69, is retiring after 32 years of teaching in the Austintown school district, but she hasn’t told her students. “I just don’t want them to worry over break,” said the Boardman resident and Youngstown native.

Faculty and staff gathered to bid farewell to the second-grade teacher before her last day of class Dec. 22. Her retirement is effective today.

“It was just overwhelming,” she said, dabbing at tears. “You work with a group of people, and you don’t realize how much they mean to you and how much you mean to them.”

“My house smells like a funeral parlor. ... all those flowers,” she added. “Even my cat is upset.”

Hired in 1978, Landy-Pearce first worked at Woodside Elementary as a tutor and substitute teacher. She graduated from Youngstown State University, where she earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees, and would later teach second, third and fifth grades, ending up at Watson Elementary.

“It’s a very challenging job,” she said. “You come in in the morning, and you have to devote all of it to the students.”

Permanent substitute Dana Elias will greet students in 2011 and finish out the year with the class. A job opening for a new teacher will be posted over the summer, said Watson Elementary School Principal Shelia Palombo.

But Landy-Pearce will be missed.

“She’s just so motherly,” said Palombo, who has worked closely with the teacher only since taking up the principal position in the fall. “She was always coming in and telling me I was doing a good job and to keep it up.”

Watson secretary Diane Roncone has known Landy-Pearce for 19 years.

“She’s excellent,” Roncone said. “She’s firm. She’s fair. She loves the kids, ... and I think they respect her.”

In her new free time, Landy-Pearce plans to travel with her husband, who is also retired. They want to visit their daughter in Florida and have a cruise scheduled for next Easter to the Caribbean.

If she does return to subbing part-time, she wants to do it in the Austintown district and at Watson.

“It’s been a very exciting life. I just hope I don’t miss it too much,” she said.

Also leaving the district today is seventh-grade language-arts teacher Deborah Gallite Champagne.

Gallite, 60, taught at Austintown Middle School for 17 years as a language- arts teacher. She was previously a gym teacher at Lloyd Elementary for six years and taught at Salem High School for one year.

“As a gym teacher, I knew every child in the school, and that was special to me,” she said. “Here I teach 100 kids, and I really get to know these kids.”

Gallite received her bachelor’s degree in physical education from Ohio University and later earned her master’s degree in education at Youngstown State University.

After she retires, Gallite is moving with her new husband to a new home in Chillicothe. The two plan to take care of Gallite’s elderly parents, and her daughter will soon move nearby.

“She’s pregnant, and I’m excited to be a grandmother,” Gallite said.

Gallite’s colleague Debbie Scardina wrote a poem in light of her retirement entitled “Mrs. Gallite.” The third stanza reads: “Not just a mind was she trying to teach,/ But rather a soul she was trying to reach./ To teach them the truth and show them the light/ So that they’d know the wrong from the right.”

Gallite feels the poem does justice to her career and said she felt a special bond with students in a setting as intimate as a writing class.

“I think they’re special kids,” she said. “I love what they have to say to me.”

After more than 20 years of teaching, she said students these days need more character building and positive role models than ever before.

“They need to focus on volunteer service, being more a part of the family,” she said. “I just feel they need it so much these days.”

Substitute Amanda Basile will finish teaching the class this year.

“I’m sad to leave. Very sad,” Gallite said. “But it’s time. Other people need me.”