Sandy Woody’s 18-year career at Lutie School focused on making a difference in students’ lives

If you’ve been involved in any way with Lutie School in the last 18 years, you’re probably familiar with the warm and welcoming, slightly off-beat and fun personality of Ms. Sandra Woody. 

Woody, who has served in varying faculty roles in her nearly two decades at Lutie, says she found a home in the hallways of the Theodosia school a long time ago. 

“It is hard to explain… I feel this is where I am meant to be. There is just something about the students here… I feel I am making a difference in their lives,” she recently said in an interview with the Times. 

Woody currently teaches seventh grade, eighth grade, ninth grade, 10th grade and 11th grade English classes, a freshman-level short stories and creative writing class, mass media/yearbook and serves as the elementary librarian. 

In addition to her classes, she serves as a sponsor for the school’s National Junior Honor Society, National Honor Society, middle and high school student council, student ambassador program and eighth grade class. 

She is also completing the e-MINTS training, a national education program aimed at training educators to integrate technology into the classroom. 

A long and crooked path to teaching

Although she’s found her true calling at Lutie, Woody says it took some time to get there. 

“I was born and raised in Indianapolis, Indiana. I moved back and forth between Indiana and Arkansas,” she said. “I went to elementary in both Indiana and Arkansas, junior high in both states and graduated from Mountain Home (Ark.) High School in 1978.”

Woody said she worked many jobs before becoming a teacher, including ones at “a shirt factory, waiting tables, working for an audio/video store ordering parts, doing payroll, answering phones, serving on the planogram team for Target, cooking at various places, and then I went to work with the mentally challenged, a job I did for over 15 years.”

Although she says she had ambitions of becoming a teacher during her freshman year in high school, she didn’t pursue that education path right away. 

“I listened to other people and went on different routes. I became an EMT, went a year to electronics school and then became a med tech when I started working with the mentally challenged,” she explained. 

She moved to Ozark County in 1989. 

“I wound up divorced and raising my two kids by myself. I would volunteer at [Gainesville] Elementary School and one day Sandra Strong said I should just go to school and become a teacher because I was there all the time anyway. I agreed because I knew I wanted to be a teacher for a long time.”

In 1998, Woody enrolled in college at the age of 38 and finally began working her way down the path into the education field. 

Starting her career at Lutie

She attended what was then Southwest Missouri State University (now named Missouri State University) in West Plains for most of her classes, and she traveled to Springfield for a few that weren’t offered at West Plains. She did her student teaching at Lutie and fell in love with the students and school. 

She graduated in December 2003 and accepted a teaching position the next month at Lutie, teaching the second half of the year for a teacher who resigned after the first semester.

Since that first year she’s transitioned into many roles, floating around to fill in as she’s needed. Her teaching positions have included classes in middle and high school science, middle school social studies, middle and high school English, elementary art, elementary physical education, served as the librarian and middle school math. 

For the last three years, her role has been primarily as the middle and high school English teacher and the school librarian. 

Small classes, big impact

At Lutie, class sizes are often small, sometimes with less than five students in a specific class. The lower student teacher ratio allows educators to really get to know and help students on a more personalized basis than larger classrooms allow. 

Woody says she’s found that individualized teaching work rewarding.

“…I want to make a difference in the lives of kids. I feel that the students at Lutie need me, or at least they say they do. I really do think the kids here need consistency in their lives, and I am more than happy to be here for them. The students are wonderful,” she said. “I start seeing them in kindergarten [through] the library, and then I’m fortunate enough to have them in class starting in seventh grade.”

She said that all the hard work and dedication is worth it when you realize that you’ve made a real impact on a student’s life. 

“The first time a student did a shout out at graduation to thank me for being there for them made me realize that all of that preaching in class actually got through to them and that I did make a difference. It’s moments like these that make it totally worth the time and effort needed to be a good teacher. When students come back to visit or send thank you letters telling you that you made a difference in their lives, brings me to tears every time,” she said. 

She’s found some the most rewarding moments of her job in the classroom. She says her impact really hits home when a student who has proclaimed he or she hates to read finally finds a book or genre that they enjoy, or when she is able to share the news with a student that their essay had won an award. She said it always makes her smile when a student “finally gets grammar!”

Engaging classroom projects

Many students enjoy Woody’s classes because she veers away from the textbook to engage students in fun, hands-on learning projects. 

She said this year, in one of her English classes, high school students are working on a readers theatre project based on a public service announcement of their choosing. The high school students will be writing their own public service pieces and performing them to an audience of elementary students with hand puppets at the school’s new puppet stage. 

The readers theatre project is just one of many engaging projects Woody has led in her time at Lutie. 

In the past when she was teaching science, she conducted a mock murder investigation unit in which students used science-based techniques to reveal finger prints, analyze hair samples, find a murder weapon and other detective work. 

Another lesson focused on biome studies, and students cooked recipes from foods all across the world. 

She’s also accompanied students on a trip to China and has led several eighth grade camping trips where students and chaperones slept in tents at Blanchard Springs, Buck Creek and other locations. 

Making a difference

Woody says educators in today’s world aren’t free from challenges in the workplace.

“I think one of the most challenging aspects of teaching would often be the lack of materials and resources. The world is changing so rapidly that it is often difficult to stay even,” she said. 

She also said there’s a struggle at times to get the community and parents involved in students’ education. Woody says she wants parents and students to know that her classroom always has an open door.

“I want them to know they’re always welcome here, as long as school policy allows. I want them to be involved. I can adapt my schedule to their schedule. I can come in early. I can stay late. I’m happy to come in on the weekends,” she said. “I believe in their kids, and I want the students to believe in themselves just as much as I do.”

When asked why she teaches - and why she teaches at Lutie, Woody says it’s simple. 

“I know I’m where I’m supposed to be. I want to make a difference in kids lives, and I’m doing that here at Lutie.”