Queen of Hedges relinquishing throne

In a few weeks, the queen of Hedges School is relinquishing her throne.

Roxie Lehl, the school's self-proclaimed queen, is retiring at the end of the year after 34 years of teaching. She spent her entire career at Hedges, only occasionally changing classrooms and swapping grades.

In many ways, Lehl has come full circle. She is back in the third-grade classroom where she began her career. The same blackboards with the original slate still hang on the walls, and students sit in the same desks children sat in more than three decades ago.

Even more significantly, she has 9-year-old Grace Burtsfield in class this year. Grace's mother, Dani, was in Lehl's very first class.

"I find great symmetry in having Dani in the first year and Grace the last," Lehl said.

The Burtsfields also see the significance.

Last spring, when Grace got the report card that announced who her third-grade teacher would be, she waited to open it until she was with her mother. Dani Burtsfield had hoped her daughter would be in Lehl's class.

Grace remembers opening the envelope and reading to her mom, "'Roxie Lehl. Is that her?' And my mom was like, 'Yes it is!'"

Burtsfield, now a first-grade teacher at Russell School, remembers the fall of 1975, when Lehl was "Miss Facincani" and fresh out of college. She had been hired three days before the school year started when a Hedges third-grade teacher decided to go back to college. That teacher had expected to return the following autumn.

"I was told over and over, 'This is strictly for one year,'" Lehl said.

She remembers feeling a little uncertain throughout that first year, both because she expected it to be a short-term job and because she was a new teacher. But despite her doubts, Lehl had fun.

So did her students.

One little boy in that class was a "Happy Days' fan with an impressive knack for impersonating the Fonz. Burtsfield remembers Lehl let her help grade papers after school and would buy her glass bottles of Orange Crush from the teachers' lounge.

"In third grade, school's still about having fun and enjoying learning," Burtsfield said. "Roxie made it fun."

But Lehl was tough when she needed to be. She once caught Burtsfield cheating on a reading assignment; Burtsfield still remembers her reaction.

"'Right to the corner, Danielle,'" she said, mimicking Lehl's stern tone. "She wasn't a yeller."

The trip to the corner was enough to keep Burtsfield honest after that. "I never disappointed her again."

Lehl's influence ultimately inspired Burtsfield to become a teacher. Interestingly, Lehl became a teacher because of her own third-grade teacher's influence.

"She taught me to love to take a test," Lehl said.

After attending public school in Polson and graduating from Polson High School, Lehl earned a bachelor's degree in education from the University of Montana. She has been at Hedges School ever since.

When she realized she had been at the school longer than anyone else, Lehl declared herself the queen of Hedges. Her sister, an artist, made her a crown out of metal and blue velvet. A fellow teacher found an ornately carved chair at a garage sale that serves as Lehl's throne.

The throne will stay at the school when Lehl retires - but she is taking her crown with her.

Lehl has been through seven principals, five classrooms and three grades at Hedges. She taught first grade once - she says she still isn't sure how her class learned to read that year - and moved with her students when they went to second grade.

But for 26 years, Lehl has taught her favorite grade: third.

She jokingly says she isn't much different than the 9-year-olds in her class and that she enjoys relating to her students.

"I do like the third-grade sense of humor very much," she said. "I think it really starts to develop then."

There have been some constants throughout Lehl's career. She has taught art at least once a week, something she says some teachers have given up. She reads Julie Edwards' "The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles' to every class.

But other things have changed. More students come to teachers now with personal problems, Lehl said. The lessons have changed, too - from basic addition and subtraction to prealgebra and probability.

"I used to teach arithmetic. Now I teach math," she said.

Lehl's teaching style has changed, too. It's "much more kid-centered, more child-driven" than it used to be, which gives her students more ownership in their education, she said.

Teaching has been a constant learning process, she said - and even though she believes this is the right time to retire, Lehl said it's frustrating to quit when she hasn't reached her peak.

That's one thing the queen would tell the 1975 version of herself, if she could.

"I'd say, 'You're going to have a good time,'" Lehl said. "'You're going to surprised with what you learn. You think you know it now - just wait!'"

Reporter Kristi Albertson may be reached at 758-4438 or by e-mail at kalbertson@dailyinterlake.com