LOOKING IN ON: EDUCATION

By Emily Richmond (contact)

Monday, June 19, 2006 | 7:01 a.m.

Offers of assistance are pouring in for Thurman White Middle School Principal Kim Grytdahl, whose volunteer efforts as a teacher recruiter were chronicled recently by the Sun.

Local businesses are talking about assembling "goodie bags" for Grytdahl to hand out at the next job fair, and photographers have offered panoramic pictures that he can hang in his booth to get attention.

One reader was angry that Grytdahl was sent to a science teachers' convention in Anaheim, Calif., without the freebies or displays that would attract more visitors to his booth.

Grytdahl said the response is gratifying - even if he did take some fun ribbing from family and friends for his failure to pack dress socks for the trip. Out of desperation at an Anaheim convenience store, he bought a pair of women's knee-highs.

His fashion tastes notwithstanding, Grytdahl has been promoted to principal of Silverado High School for the 2006-07 academic year, replacing retiring Mark Coleman.

From the moonlighting-teacher files: Sam King, who has been with the School District for nearly three decades and is currently an Adult Education administrator, also has 20 years under her belt as a waitress at the Peppermill. She took the second job when she was a newly widowed single mother in the mid-1970s.

"The Peppermill was great to the teachers who worked there - they'd adjust your shifts and always encouraged employees to go on with their educations," King said of her former employer.

Occasionally, King found herself waiting on the families of her students. One time a teenager showed up with some older friends.

"She said to me, 'Don't worry, I'm not drinking,' and I said, 'No, you're leaving,' " King said with a laugh.

At last week's Adult Education graduation at the Thomas & Mack Center, School Board Vice President Sheila Moulton shared one of her favorite inspirational stories of the value of education, a tale familiar to audiences of graduations past.

As the story goes, a drowning English boy is rescued by a gardener. The parents are so grateful, they help the gardener's son become a doctor. The drenched boy - Winston Churchill - grows up to become prime minister of England. He is stricken with pneumonia and his life is saved by a doctor - who, yes, is the gardener's son.

Unfortunately Moulton's commencement chestnut - which she says she photocopied from a book of inspirational stories several years ago - never happened. According to Churchill's estate, it's one of the more popular false tales told about the legendary leader.

Churchill never came close to drowning as a boy and his life was never saved by a gardener. And while he was treated for pneumonia and a heart ailment as an older man, he wasn't under the care of Dr. Alexander Fleming, the inventor of penicillin - who in many versions of the story is identified as the gardener's son.

After learning from the Sun that the story was little more than myth, a surprised Moulton said she would remove the tale from her repertoire.

"I've used that many times on many occasions; I've even given out copies to people," Moulton said.

"Obviously I would never repeat something that I knew to be untrue.

"It's too bad because it's a nice story."