Teacher Sandra Riley is considered Dora’s ‘steel magnolia’

Sandra Riley is the "steel magnolia" of Dora High School. She rarely raises her soft, whispery voice, but she is a strong presence in her classroom. Surrounded by the paraphernalia of education and the memorabilia of decades of teaching, she personifies professionalism in the classroom.
Riley cites her mother, Naomi Exline McKee, as her inspiration. "My mother began teaching right out of high school, back when you could get a two-year teaching certificate upon graduation."
For years, Naomi worked toward her degree by attending summer school, even after she married Warren McKee and they started their family.
"Daddy would stay home with us in the summers so Mother could go to school. She spent the week in Springfield and came home on weekends," Riley said.
Naomi McKee's determination led to a long career. She taught in Howell and Ozark County schools for 46 years.
Warren and Naomi McKee made their home in Pottersville, where Warren operated a sawmill and a construction business called McKee Log Homes. The McKee children included Barbara, Sandra and John.
When Sandra was 5 years old, her family moved from their two-room house into a large home with previously unknown amenities like indoor plumbing.
"My sister Barbara and I thought it was a castle," says Riley with a laugh. To this day, Warren McKee, 91, still lives in the "castle." Naomi passed away in 2005.

<strong>Success through hard work</strong>
"My parents taught me what it meant to value an education. They told me I could do anything I wanted to do if I put forth the effort," Riley said. Success through hard work is a conviction she tries to instill in her students today.
Riley's education started in the one-room Oak Mound School near Pottersville. Then she went on to Bakersfield schools. She credits a teacher at Bakersfield High School with encouraging her to pursue a career in home and family management.
"Artie Howell encouraged me and inspired me to do what I'm doing today," Riley says.
After graduating from Bakersfield High School, she earned a degree in vocational home economics from Southwest Missouri State (now Missouri State University).
Sandra McKee married Gary Riley in 1972, and soon children David, Jessica and Daniel rounded out their family. Gary Riley operated a construction company specializing in custom-designed red cedar log homes.
For four years in the 1980s, Riley taught kindergarten at St. Mary's School in West Plains. "It was the perfect job for a mother with two small children at home," she recalls. "It was the best of two worlds."

<strong>A job in Dora</strong>
In 1985 the superintendent of Dora schools asked her to head up the district's fledgling Parents As Teachers program. She accepted the challenge and still works with young parents in the Dora school district.
According to Riley, the PAT program trains parents to assist their children from birth to age 5 with their physical, emotional, social and intellectual development. Riley makes home visits to families, organizes group meetings for parents to discuss and share information, screens children to assess their overall health and development, and arranges for special services, if needed.
According to independent evaluations, children in the PAT program demonstrate a higher level of speech, social skills and problem solving than comparison children. Further, PAT parents are more involved with their children's lives and are more confident in their parenting roles.
In 1986, Riley began teaching what was then called home economics at Dora High. Today the program is called family and consumer sciences to reflect the expanded roles of parents in our modern world. Riley's classes are no longer all girls. Half her students are boys.
"Today both parents are working. So family and career are closely related," she says. "Both must work to keep the house running and the family together."
Riley is the adviser to the Dora chapter of the Family Career and Community Leaders of America, a national organization. According to its bylaws, the group promotes personal growth and leadership development through family and consumer science education. The program focuses on the multiple roles of family members and fosters critical thinking, interpersonal communication, practical knowledge and vocational preparation.
Club members maintain a strip of highway through MoDOT's Adopt-A-Highway program, and they sponsor a food drive for the Christmas holidays. Every year, Riley takes a group of her older students to St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, Tenn. Last year, the group presented the facility with a check for $200 raised from recycling aluminum cans.

<strong>Old-time values</strong>
The Dora educator believes that FACS classes and FCCLA club participation help to counter the societal problems of today's fragmented families. She wishes today's children could enjoy the comfort of the old-time values she learned as a girl.
"I was so loved and sheltered," she says. "I never wanted to do anything to disappoint my parents."
Those values sustained Riley through the death of her husband in June 1994 from complications of the autoimmune condition scleroderma. They had been married 22 years.
In January 1998, fire destroyed Dora School, and Riley lost her classroom to the flames.
The following September, she was working in her temporary classroom in a house trailer baking cobblers for the Parent Teacher Organization to sell at Hootin an Hollarin when she received a message. Her house was on fire. Authorities believed an electrical short sparked the blaze that totally destroyed her home.
"My family and I were remodeling the house. It was our first big step after Gary's death. My son Daniel was still living at home. All we had left were the clothes on our backs."
Through what Riley calls "the kindness of family, friends and strangers," she built a new log home where her family of three children and eight grandchildren can gather for holiday celebrations.

<strong>Teaching and traveling</strong>
Now an empty nester, Riley loves antiquing, reading and walking. She and her best friend and fellow teacher, Becky Stratton, have signed up for two educational tours organized by a group of Future Farmers of America students from Rossville, Ind. Their first trip in 2009 visited France, England, Switzerland, Austria and Germany. Last year, they toured Italy and Spain.
"The best part of the tours is trying new foods," says Riley. "I tried lamb for the first time on a ferry boat on the Mediterranean Sea. By the time we reached Barcelona, we were ready for what we thought was a meal of burgers on a bun and fries. It turned out to be horsemeat."
Riley expects to teach for five more years, but she longs for the old days when a teacher could teach all day with few distractions. Extra-curricular activities, social events, athletic competitions and societal complexities complicate teachers' lives.
"The demands on the teaching profession expand and change every year," says Riley with a philosophical sigh. "We all have to grow with them."

<p>Sandra Riley, who teaches family and consumer sciences at Dora
High School, shares lunch in the FACS kitchen with her friend,
history teacher Becky Stratton.</p>

<p>When she’s not with her students at Dora High School, educator
Sandra Riley enjoys being with her family, including her eight
grandchildren. First row, from left, Kaleb Riley, Shealynn Riley,
Elijah Riley. Second row, Rileigh Massey, D.J. Riley, Blake Riley.
Top row, Makenna Parker, Sandra Riley, Madelyn Riley.</p>