It’s not easy to run one of the largest schools in the district. At 1,200 students, it is a lot for faculty at Tomlin Middle School to handle. But having great teachers and administrators is the key. This year will be the last for three teachers who have educated children for more than 100 years combined.
Rebecca Hosmer
For students who have had Rebecca Hosmer as a teacher, many refer to her as their mom at school. The no-nonsense educator was in charge of a difficult sect of kids in the intensive learning alternative program.
“I have worked with some kids that are a little rough around the edges,” Hosmer said. “The real story should be about those kids. They didn’t always listen at first, but they turned into wonderful young adults.”
One of those students was Lorrie Holdbrooks Rhind. She came to Tomlin in the 1980s from Lakeland, to live with her dad, who her family thought could give her more guidance. The feisty middle-schooler was used to skipping school. On her first day at Tomlin, an older friend from Lakeland came to check her out of school. She got busted but walked off campus anyway. Rhind was plucked from the regular population and put into Hosmer’s class for four periods out of the day.
“I just didn’t care,” Rhind said. “We were so bad, and then, all of a sudden, we get in her class and do good.”
Hosmer was tough as nails. If a student did wrong, she would give them the silent treatment. If a student skipped class, she would call their parents or even go to their house. If a student fell asleep on their desk, she would slap it with a ruler.
“She is just amazing,” Rhind said. “She didn’t take crap from you. She understood us, when others didn’t even want to look at us.”
But, Hosmer wasn’t all business. When the students did well she rewarded them with trips to the Cuban sandwich shop down the road, free time at Friday Fun Days and playing arcade games at Hungry Howie’s.
“Other than my parents, she was probably my biggest single influence,” Celena Copeland Alorda said. “She wasn’t just a teacher. She did teach us a lot of life lessons.”
Hosmer will be retiring after 33 years at Tomlin. She is going on a trip to Italy in October and plans to spend time with her family and grandchildren.
Dianne Stevens
In her 48 years of teaching, Dianne Stevens has had a wide range of students in her classroom. She once taught English as a second language to a 79-year-old woman. She’s worked with children in alternative learning programs. And she’s even worked with adorable “ankle biters” in preschool settings.
But she got her start working with Airmen at Chicksands Air Force Base, in England. Stevens landed on base after her husband was stationed there. She was hired to raise the reading ability of enlisted personnel on base.
When she came back to the United States, she went back to school and studied social work. Then, she received a fellowship to obtain her master’s degree at the University of South Florida. Since then, she’s been working as an educator. Her first job was an ESE reading teacher at Bryan Elementary.
From there, she held a variety of positions. At one point, she co-owned her own kindergarten off Bayshore, in Tampa. She spent seven years in alternative education.
“Sometimes, we feel like little farmers planting the seed,” Stevens said. “We do the best we can for our students. I’m excited to come to school.”
But her real passion was environmental science. That enthusiasm bleeds over into her personal life, too. She visited the Grand Canyon three times and recalls watching the sediment mix in the Mississippi River as she flew over.
Stevens has been at Tomlin for nine years. For all of those years, she has led the Technology Student Association, taking kids to compete in different categories like CO2 car races and structural challenges such as building bridges. They have won multiple competitions throughout the years. In February, they won two first places and one third place at the state competition.
There’s one more competition, a national competition in Washington, D.C., to which Stevens will be taking her students before she retires this summer.
“(What I’ll miss most) is watching the light go on,” Stevens said. “It doesn’t matter how old you are. You can be 69 and I can still see the light go on.”
Marilyn Cook
Since Marilyn Cook was a teenager, all she ever knew was teaching. Her father taught a youth Sunday School. Some days, he would randomly call her up to the front of the class and tell her she was teaching the day’s lesson.
“Education was probably the most important thing for him,” Cook said. “Formal or not, it was something to hang our hat on.”
So, Cook went off the school to become a teacher. While she was attending school, she raised her family and worked as a substitute and assistant teacher at Pinecrest Elementary. She was the only sibling out of five who finished college.
After she finished school, she went on to teach for 14 years, at Trapnell Elementary. Through her 33-year career, she has worked up the ranks. At Turkey Creek Middle School, she was a team leader and reading coach. She served as assistant principal of curriculum at Shields Middle School, in Ruskin, and assistant principal at Randall Middle School, in Lithia.
“(Challenges) are a moment-by-moment thing,” Cook said.
Cook served as assistant principal of student affairs for 18 months, at Tomlin. She tried to retire last year, but Principal Susan Sullivan convinced her to stay. Now, she will help set up summer school and finally leave to enjoy her cows, grandchildren and travel.
“It’s hard for me to believe it’s been 33 years,” Cook said.
Contact Amber Jurgensen at ajurgensen@plantcityobserver.com.
SO LONG
Language arts and reading teacher Norma Coutour also retired after 35 years. Her last day was Friday, April 4.