BY CLIFF SMELLEY
Vivian Ramseur has had a lifelong love of learning, so you can be sure that her retirement will be filled with acquiring new knowledge.
The only change will be that she won’t be inspiring children to learn also as a teacher at Bradford Elementary School.
Ramseur, who’s been in the Bradford County School District since 2002, will teach her final day on May 23. Except for four years at the former Hampton Elementary School, her entire education career has been spent at Bradford Elementary/Southside Elementary.
“I’m excited, but I’m going to hate not being around the kids,” Ramseur said. “It’s kind of bittersweet. I’m excited that I’m retiring, but these children — you get attached to them.”
Though she grew up wanting to be a teacher, Ramseur post-college life began with several jobs that had nothing to do with that profession. It was because of her desire to learn new things — a desire that has never gone away.
“I’m still that way,” Ramseur said. “They keep asking, ‘What are you going to do when you retire?’ I say, ‘I have never had a problem finding something to do. Don’t worry about me. I’ll be just fine.’”
Childhood passion
Ramseur began preparing herself for being a teacher early in life. As a 7-8-year-old growing up in Lawtey, she’d use paper and pencil, a rock and the sidewalk or the set of encyclopedias her parents bought to teach things to her sister and brothers.
“I knew I loved learning, so I wanted you to love learning,” Ramseur said.
She laughed at the memory of pointing to something and asking her siblings, “What sound does this make?”
“I was doing phonics even back then,” Ramseur said.
Ramseur said she had “wonderful” role models who were educators, including Dorothy Moore and Olivia Scott.
“They were my major heroes,” she said.
Ramseur’s parents, Freddie and Emma Lou Bell, were role models as well, teaching her to love others, something she was reminded of as a third-grader, when she began attending Lawtey Elementary School because of integration. Her family was the first Black family to attend the school.
“I was very blessed to have parents who taught me that skin color doesn’t matter. It’s how you love people and treat people,” Ramseur said.
Yes, some children didn’t like her being at the Lawtey school, but Ramseur said they were few.
“The majority of those kids are still friends to me today,” she said.
College experience
Ramseur, after graduating from high school, attended Santa Fe College for a year and a half before moving to Georgia to attend Clark Atlanta University. The historically Black college offered an environment that consisted of Black people from various walks of life. She knew students whose parents were in such professions as accounting, law and medicine.
“To see that was very impressive,” Ramseur said.
She also enjoyed really delving into Black history. Ramseur said in elementary school, you’d learn about such people as George Washington Carver, Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks, but at Clark Atlanta University, she was becoming familiar with people she had never heard of before, such as author, poet and teacher Gwendolyn Brooks, columnist, novelist, playwright, poet and social activist Langston Hughes, and political activist Marcus Mosiah Garvey.
“Gwendolyn Brooks came to my school and did her poetry,” Ramseur said. “That was just mind-boggling.”
Joseph Lowery, who founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference with Martin Luther King Jr., was her pastor. Ramseur, who had a friend who worked with SCLC, had the opportunity to meet Coretta Scott King.
The experiences in the Peach State didn’t end there. Rather than go into the classroom and put her degree in Education to work, she held jobs at a bank and florist shop and even got real-estate license.
“It was about learning different things,” Ramseur said. “Real estate was learning something new. Working at the bank was just learning something new. I’ve always been crafty, so learning to do flowers was just something else I could learn to do.”
Ramseur eventually moved back to Florida to care for her mother. It’s what she was perfectly suited for anyway. Though she loved her time in Atlanta, she is, as she described herself, one who loves “the southern, quiet living.”
So, she once again enjoyed the comforts of home in Lawtey. Next, it was time to start enjoying the comforts of a career she was always destined to be a part of.
Teaching
When she sought a job after moving back to Florida, teaching wasn’t on her mind. Instead, she wanted to work in the school system as a paraprofessional. However, when Bill McRae, who was principal at Southside Elementary School at the time, found out she had a degree in Education, he told her, “You’re not going to be a para. You’re going to be a teacher.”
Ramseur may have taken some detours, but in the end, she wound up making her childhood dream come true.
“I fell in love with it all over again,” she said.
Wanting to teach had once been a passion, but Ramseur said she was “scared to death” when she first began doing it. She said she was grateful for the help she received from her fellow teachers at Southside, including Vicki McKinney.
“She taught first grade right next to me,” Ramseur said. “Every day, she would come over and check on me.”
McKinney would ask Ramseur what she did in her class each day, offering encouragement and suggestions.
“She just trained me to be a good teacher,” Ramseur said.
Ramseur is not only grateful for the teachers who helped her, but also for all the administrators she worked under, describing them as “just awesome principals who encouraged you and gave you insight on what you needed to do.” She took any suggestions on how she could improve seriously.
“I’ve always loved learning, so if there was another way that I needed to do something to improve my learning environment for my students, that’s what I was going to do,” Ramseur said.
Ramseur taught second, third and fourth grades throughout her career. She also filled the roles of reading interventionist and (this past year) ESE interventionist.
As is the case for any teacher, Ramseur lived for those moments where students finally grasped something they were struggling with.
“It’s just a sigh of relief (for me),” Ramseur said, “but it’s also an excitement for them because once they get it, then they want to do more.”
Retirement
When it comes to thinking about what she’ll do during retirement, Ramseur said all the home projects that have been put off over time can finally be addressed. As a self-professed list maker, she said, “I have my long list of things. My husband (Byron) is already afraid that I’m going to have him working a lot when I retire.”
Traveling will be part of the next chapter of her life as well as the upcoming wedding of one of her sons. (Ramseur has three children: Emmali, James and Calvin.)
Of course, time will be spent learning new things.
“I want to learn how to tile,” Ramseur said. “I’ve always wanted to do a tile backsplash for my kitchen.”
Ramseur wants to take an interior-design class or intern with an interior designer. She’s also considering taking a class so she can learn how to do her own taxes.
“I can do mine, and I can probably help somebody else do theirs, too,” she said.
You may also find her still showing up at Bradford Elementary School.
“I know how hard it is to get enough teachers certified to do testing, so I’ve considered going back to help with testing,” Ramseur said.
Even if she’s not at the school, she’ll still have children as a part of her life. She has two grandsons: Nehemiah and Titus.
Ramseur said the fact that she’s retiring probably won’t affect her much on her last day because it won’t feel much different from the last days of previous school years. After all, she’s used to taking a break during the summer.
It’ll be two or three weeks before the new school year starts that it’ll hit her. She won’t be going through her usual routine of preparing for another year of teaching.
Ramseur said she just may have to sleep in late on the first day of the 2025-26 school year.
“I won’t have to get up at 5, so that will be a beautiful thing,” she said.
She won’t stay in bed too long, though. Ramseur said she’s an early riser anyway who can’t sleep past 8 a.m.
The earlier she starts the day, the more time available to her to satisfy her craving for learning and doing new things.
“I can’t help myself,” Ramseur said.
