Garden City School
Named for Former
Lincoln Teacher
Lincoln Sentinel-Republican, 18 April 1996
If you attended Lincoln High School between the years of 1938 and 1948, you probably remember her. There’s a good possibility she taught you English, foreign languages, reading or physical education. Bernadine Sitts taught a lot of children over the years and those children remember her.
Sitts will be remembered by a lot more. Her dedication to children over her 50-year teaching career was recognized March 18, 1996, when the Board of Education in Garden City voted to name a school after her. Some of the following information appeared in several news stories published in a Garden City newspaper.
She taught from 1933-36 at a rural school in McPherson County; from 1938-48 at Lincoln High School; and from 1948-82 at Garden City High School.
Having never married, Sitts considered the children in her classes her own. She invested her life in them.
At Garden City, Sitts served as adviser for the high school yearbook for 30 years and taught Sunday school for about 50 years. She was selected as an Honorary Chapter Farmer by Future Farmers of America students and as an Honorary member of Thespians by other students.
During her last 15 years of teaching, she created individualized reading programs for each of her students, writing a book for each one according to the student’s ability.
After retiring in 1982, Sitts traded her classrooms at school for an office at First United Methodist Church. At the age of 83, she continues to volunteer – seven days a week – at the church.
Three years ago she battled cancer and won. She keeps fit by walking to work each morning.
The Garden City Board of Education received five names for consideration in naming two new school buildings. At a board of education meeting held Monday, April [15], members decided one of the schools would be named after a former Garden City school administrator Charles O. Stones. The other name chosen was Sitts’.
The new first/sixth grade school will be named Bernadine Sitts Intermediate School. It will be built to accommodate 700 children.
Sitts briefly summed up her career in teaching. “It seems all through my life God has led me,” she said. “My makeup is such if I am given a job I do the best I can … I just like teaching. I like working with youth. … They have been kind to me.”
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