“I totally love it,” she said, noting she could have stepped down years ago. “I have a great passion for what I do. I love it just as much as I did when I started.”

It’s an impressive run. But there comes a time when you slow down, and for Glenn, now a second-grade teacher at Wasatch Elementary, that will be Friday, when she’ll be retiring as a full-time instructor after the last bell rings. She started her teaching career in 1960 and taught at Grant and Dee elementary schools, Ogden schools that have since been torn down, before transferring to Wasatch.

Health issues prompted the decision, she said, but Glenn isn’t planning to step away from classrooms completely. A new teacher will come in to lead her Wasatch classroom in January, after the holiday break, but Glenn intends to help out around the school as a tutor, she said.

“I always want to be involved in it,” she said.

Photo supplied, Ogden School District

Of course, the academic side of teaching is important, Glenn said. But in her career, she has taken things further, putting a focus on instilling a sense of worth and responsibility in her students. She aims to help her students understand that “they have a commitment to themselves to do the best they can every day they come into the class.”

‘QUITE A CHANGE’

Glenn, who keeps her age to herself, moved with her family to Ogden from Louisiana after graduating from high school.

As a student in Louisiana, Glenn, who is African-American, attended segregated schools. That changed in Utah, though, where she attended Weber State University, then called Weber College, and then Utah State University.

“Coming to Utah was quite a change for me,” she said. Fellow students treated her well, but for a time, she said, she “didn’t know how to act” in an integrated atmosphere.

What’s more, the move from the South didn’t mean a Jim Crow system — with separate facilities for white people and Black people — didn’t exist in Utah when she first came here. In Louisiana, signs overtly spelled out the segregation. In Utah, segregation was more subtle, she said, with ushers in movie theaters, for instance, directing Black customers to the balcony.

Her late father, Frank Satterwhite, who led the Utah chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People for many years, successfully fought for change giving African-Americans permission to swim at Lorin Farr Pool in Ogden. Perhaps some of that spirit rubbed off, as Glenn says a focus for her in the classroom has been diversity and civil rights issues.

“I teach my students to celebrate diversity and to be accepting of all differences. Everyone is welcome in my classroom,” Glenn wrote in the program for a retirement celebration honoring her, held last week at Wasatch.

She expounded on that in talking with the Standard-Examiner. A key message she conveys to her students is that “we’re all in this together and we should do everything to get along with our fellow man,” she said.

Moreover, on learning of instances of name-calling among her students, she’ll address them head on. “I never let things like that pass if I knew about it,” she said.

Whatever the nature of the incident, she’ll encourage understanding. “Talk to them, find out about them instead of judging them,” she said.

More generally, Glenn, who has a daughter in Texas, has tried to create a safe, loving atmosphere in the classroom. It’s had an impact, as former students will regularly approach Glenn on seeing her around the community to say hello and ask after her.

Indeed, one of her pieces of advice to younger teachers is to convey a sense of caring to students, a sense that you are there to help them. It’s been central for Glenn in her career as an educator.

“I always tell them that I love them no matter what,” she said.