#1: Marvin Murray, 36 years

Special Education teacher, Marvin Murray, teaches the multi-disabled support students at the school. After graduating from Tyrone Area High School, he moved on to post secondary education at Indiana University of Pennsylvania (IUP) and Saint Francis University. 

“I taught at Roosevelt for the first nine years of my teaching career. I was always at the secondary level but just junior high, then when the job came open [I came over]. I worked with this type of kid in a group home before so I thought ‘well yeah I can go over there and fill that vacancy,’ so that was about 27 years ago,” Murray said.

When Murray first started his job, traveling wasn’t always the easiest.

“I-99 made it so nice once that was completed. I used to have to come up old 220 before. Then in ‘99, I started using I-99 to come to work so it cut about 10 minutes off the drive,” Murray said.

Murray’s favorite part about his job is the students he gets to work with because according to him, they aren’t like everyone else.

“My guys aren’t so geared towards math, reading and English, we are more about communicating and getting them to communicate back to us what they want if there are things they need,” Murray said. “The enjoyment is seeing them blossom and when the light comes on; like when we are teaching signs or something and they get the sign and do it back for you.”

Murray has one specific memory that he looks back on the most. 

“For Jasmine, last year when we were in middle school, she was the only kid that came in because of COVID-19, and she started talking. We didn’t even know she could talk. That was amazing. We would say the word to her, and she would say it back to us. That kind of perpetuated her using her voice more to talk about things, so that was one of the best moments I’ve had in my teaching career,” Murray said. 

Besides teaching, Murray is involved in several other activities. 

“I help Mr. McCarter with ski club during the winter. Since I live in Tyrone and I know some of the kids there, so I coach junior high football and JV baseball,” Murray said. “I’m pretty busy all year around until the summer hits, then I do my own thing.” 

Murray didn’t always plan on being a special education teacher. 

“When I worked in the group home, that got my interest in this type of student. When I got to Indiana they had something called ‘Ed of Exceptional.’ So I got into that program and went through to be a teacher,” Murray said. “I planned on being a math teacher until I had a course in senior high that I bombed.” 

While working in the group home, he began to have an interest disabled students. 

“I always wondered what they were thinking and how to break through that disability to get them to communicate with us and see why they act the way they do; so I guess that’s why I picked to go into special education instead of math,” Murray said. 

Since Murray started teaching, there have been many changes associated with teaching and the school district in general.

“When I first started it seemed that there were so many kids because we had two junior highs, so we had a lot of kids in the district and now we are combined; it just seems like the population of the area came down so that we had to combine two buildings into one,” Murray said. “When I first came in we were still allowed to paddle, so that’s how long I’ve been in and it’s been gone for years. It was a different time, we were still in the 80s. Some of the old rules that your parents talk about now were there. That was the biggest change.”

Murray offers some words of wisdom to new teachers. 

“Be all ears. Listen and pick up on stuff. Make sure you have your computer skills in order. I still struggle, and I’ve had a computer for about 30 years. Be attentive and pay attention to all the nuances of all the paperwork. Things change every year. It seems like you see the big picture but work on little hunks of it at a time to get it completed. Advice that one of the teachers gave me when I started was ‘hey, if you can’t get all your paperwork done at school don’t take it home. That is your family time, don’t take your job home with you’,” Murray said.