“Teaching is a tough job….You’re working with, and very concerned about, the lives of these kids,” he said, “and that’s a different kind of stress than trying to make a million dollar sale of software.””

Patrick Griffin

JAMESTOWN - The schools have closed for the summer and all of the children and teachers have transitioned into their summer activities. The playgrounds assume their empty facades and the classrooms echo with the fading shouts and laughter of now-departed voices. 

At Jamestown Elementary, or JES, the tiny two-room schoolhouse is losing one of its foundations. Patrick Griffin, the teacher for the older children’s classroom, known as the “olders,” is retiring after an eleven-year run.

Parents, students, former students, and other well-wishers were on hand to pay their respects to Patrick, and give gifts and heartfelt elegies.

I caught up with him on the following Tuesday as he was cleaning out his desk for the last time. His classroom, usually an orderly, clean, learning environment, was littered with boxes piled up and shelves half cleared. 

“It is weird for me,” he said as we sat down, “but it will be more strange in August when things start,” he finished as he handed me a mint. “After eleven years here, at Jamestown Elementary, and twelve years total, I’m retiring from teaching,” he said. 

He started teaching after leaving his engineering career at the age of 49, after 26 years. He had started at Motorola in Arizona before moving to Colorado, where he worked at a couple of software engineering companies where he was very successful. When the position he had aspired to became available, however, he realized he wanted to pursue something more meaningful.

“I had thought about being a teacher all of my life,” he said. ” And I thought if I was going to ever make the switch, I’ve got to do it now.”

He quit his job and went back to school, earning his Masters in Education at the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley, which he completed in only a year and a half. 

He was hired at Gilpin Elementary, teaching there for a year. Then the position opened up at Jamestown. After living in the area for over 25 years, and a year of making the drive from his house to Gilpin County, he couldn’t pass on the opportunity to teach in his hometown. 

Griffin knew that it would be hard, but in a different way from his previous career. “Teaching is a tough job….You’re working with, and very concerned about, the lives of these kids,” he said, “and that’s a different kind of stress than trying to make a million dollar sale of software.” 

But it was worth making that transition. “I learned a lot,” he said. “Understanding the differences in kids …how they needed to be worked with.” For Griffin, that was more difficult than he had realized it would be.

And to further complicate things, Jamestown has only two classrooms, one for kindergarten through second grade, the “youngers”; and the “olders,” the third through fifth grade students. With smaller classrooms, the class sizes were typically ten to twelve students, but since they were spread out among the three grades his challenge was to individualize their learning experience.

And he got to know the families and the students very well, having been their teacher for three years. “I became very attached to all the students that I taught, and so their education became very personal to me,”  he said. 

In a tiny mountain town, the kids were used to being outside much of the time, so he adapted his curriculum to adapt to their environment. 

“Trying to incorporate the outdoors into the education would always make it more engaging,” he  explained. He talked about being able to grow plants in cold frame greenhouses, and how the students learned about the structure of plants by getting out and growing them; or walking to a nearby mine to study rocks and minerals, and learning of the history of mining in the town. 

He spoke of  the reconstruction area that had been adopted by the school after the flood in 2013 had heavily damaged the town, in order to turn the tragedy into a positive thing.

They installed wildlife cameras to follow the return of wildlife and to track the gradual transformation of the area, and integrated literature by finding articles and books about restoring native landscapes.

He had other challenges during his tenure. “Of course, all schools had to deal with COVID, and that was a hard time teaching online. I was lucky because I only had ten students at the time. I couldn’t imagine trying to do it with 23 kindergarteners.”

The Marshall Fire was during his tenure as well, and the CalWood fires caused the evacuation of the town, both of which affected his students and their families. 

“We had… online school for a couple of days,” he said. “Anytime there’s something like that goes on that totally disrupts school, the kids need time to talk about it, and process it.” Griffin said they would take time to talk about events and create activities to help them process the events. 

And having fewer students, but of varying ages, created its own challenges for which he had to develop strategies. “With three grade levels in the classroom, there’s definitely a difference in maturity level between the third graders and the fifth graders. And I think that the environment here helps the younger kids…when they’re looking up at the older kids in the same classroom that are more settled, and are able to focus and do their work without a lot of input from me.”

Naturally, having so few students and being such an integral part of their lives for three years creates deeper bonds than a typical school. “I…get very attached to each one of the kids, and their futures, and how they’re doing as they go through middle school and high school,” he said. “I try, and have been successful so far, in sending a high school graduation card to everyone that graduated fifth grade.”

As for why he decided to retire now, he said he wants to be able to do some things before he gets too much older, and he realizes his window is closing quickly. 

“I’m sixty-three, and if I want to try to tackle something like this I ought to give it a try now rather than waiting a few more years.” He plans to spend time traveling in Colorado and the West, as well as internationally, possibly climbing some mountains in Ecuador with his wife Dina.

After the graduation those in attendance joined together and formed a tunnel of upheld arms and clasped hands that created a canopy over their heads, while students, teachers, and families exited the building through the tunnel. Patrick stood to the side with his wife, Dina, and viewed the scene, his thoughts inscrutable, but his eyes were tinged with red as he witnessed his final graduation.