New Teachers at Admiral King – Oct. 25, 1963

Here's something you're not very likely to see in the Morning Journal in 2017: an article listing all of the newly hired high school teachers along with their backgrounds, teaching credentials and home addresses. It ran in the Journal on October 25, 1963.

This particular article highlights the new teachers at Admiral King High School that year. Perhaps you'll recognize a few teachers. (At least one was still at King when I was there, ten years after the article was written.)

It's sad that times have changed so much that the idea of profiling new teachers in a local newspaper is just a memory. Besides the obvious privacy issues that would make the practice impractical today, families simply have more choices than ever as to where to send their students – with the public schools not always the first choice.

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Looking back at my high school years, I had a lot of good teachers at Admiral King – but one of the best was Dr. Cathy Dietlin. She inspired and motivated us to do our best, and did it in a way that was upbeat and fun, thanks to her great, energetic personality.

But she was tough as well, and held her students to high standards. I still have one of the compositions that I wrote in her class; she knocked my grade down a little bit because I didn’t use the correct format for a footnote or something.

As a testament to how effective she was as an educator, I still remember the structural concepts for writing a paper that she taught us.

I had a nice email exchange with Dr. Dietlin a few years ago. She remembered me, and even recalled where I sat in her classroom! She filled me in on her post-Admiral King years. 

"After leaving the classroom,” she wrote, "the next nine years were spent as a Central Office administrator for the Lorain City Schools.” She served as the Executive Director of Project 419: The Redesign of Teacher Education (Ohio Department of Education), which implemented the law for all Ohio’s colleges of education requiring 300 hours of field experiences prior to student teaching for teacher education students. She was also the Secondary Supervisor for the Lorain City School District. 

From 1986-2008, Dr. Dietlin was the Assistant Superintendent for the Rocky River City Schools. But she was back in Lorain County for her next position. 

"From 2008 to the present, I have been the Executive Director of REACHigher (Lorain County P-16 Council) and am housed at Lorain County Community College.” She retired in 2012, but remains on the Board of Directors of the Lorain County Community College Foundation as Vice Chairman.

In view of Dr. Dietlin’s lifelong commitment to education, it’s only fitting that her name adorns the Dr. Cathy Dietlin Scholarship for Secondary Education Majors at Lorain County Community College.