From the Editor: Lynn Beaudean ends 45-year career as Holy Cross teacher

This year was Lynn Beaudean’s 45th as a Holy Cross Elementary teacher. And it was her last.
Beaudean is retiring after a career spent teaching very young children, sometimes second- and third-graders, mostly kindergarteners. She may be the last teacher who can say that she was educated by the local Catholic school system when it was run by Marianite Holy Cross nuns and then spent a career teaching in that system.
Now Beaudean looks forward to taking a few trips. She and her husband, Roger, have two grown sons and a grown daughter living in Thibodaux.
She wants to spend time with her grandchildren, too, and “maybe just enjoy life,” Beaudean said. “It goes by so fast.”
A Morgan City native, she and her siblings followed her father, a graduate of what was then Sacred Heart Academy here, into the local Catholic school system. She started elementary school at the old Sacred Heart and then moved with the school into the new facility where Holy Cross Elementary is now. Her freshman high school class was the first at the new Central Catholic in 1964.
The Marianite nuns were still involved in local Catholic education.
“They’re a special group of women who gave their life to God,” Beaudean said. “I think that even though lay people started into the school in the profession, I think you were still influenced by their holiness, their obedience to God, what they gave up to go into the profession of being a sister. …
“They didn’t take any foolishness. I will tell you that. And I think that kids in my generation of being in school with them, we were scared of them at times. We respected them a lot more then, because we knew they were doing the work of God and make us better people.”
Along with a cousin who taught typing, a Sister Marie influenced Beaudean as she taught English.
“She inspired us to always do our best,” Beaudean said.
That’s one reason Beaudean went into teaching after graduating from Central Catholic in 1968. Another reason: not many professional fields were open to women then.
She went on to Nicholls State, where she met her husband, a Missouri native who came to Nicholls to play basketball. Roger Beaudean is an operations manager at Cenac Offshore and has a small project management company.
When they came to Morgan City to live, Beaudean was hired at what is now Holy Cross. Nuns were the principals at first. Then she worked for Mamie Bergeron, who was principal for 40 of her 50 years at the school.
As she taught, the education system began to demand more of teachers, and the system and societal changes put a bigger burden on the children.
“They see more today,” Beaudean said. “They’re exposed to more, the way our society is with divorce and single-parent homes, and one week at Dad’s and one week at Mom’s. All of that has had an influence on children today. Even though parents try their hardest, sometimes it doesn’t always work out for the best. The kids suffer a lot of times.
“Sometimes you are the only stable thing in their lives. Mom’s picking them up today, no dad’s picking them up tomorrow, no, Grandma or babysitter or aunt or a neighbor’s picking them up. … So when they want to talk to you or they want to tell you something, you have to listen.
“You can’t say, ‘Oh wait, tell me later, we’ve got to go on and do this.’ … You just don’t know what they’re going to tell you and how important what they tell you is. I mean, a child could be abused at home or is being abused. You’ve got to always be there to listen.”
Once, students learned to read in first grade. Now, Beaudean said, that’s a kindergarten task. Her students now leave kindergarten able to count to 100 and do basic addition and subtraction. And kindergarten is no longer likely to be a child’s first experience with school. Now there are pre-K programs for 3- and 4-year-olds.
“For the kids who can handle it, it’s wonderful,” Beaudean said. “But we still have children who, maturity-wise, are not ready for a lot of that.
“You have to figure out if they’re not learning, if they’re not grasping what you’re teaching. Then you have to start figuring out why. You call parents in and start talking.
“A lot of times they’re aware of it, but they just don’t want to face the problem. You have to ease into it and tell them their child might need some evaluation, ‘I see some problems and stuff here.’”
Any parent knows that disciplining young children can be an art. Beaudean said she tried to treat her students the way she’d want a teacher to treat her own children.
“I wanted my students to know that when I had to discipline them, it was because I loved them and I wanted them to do the right things,” Beaudean said. “I’d always throw it right back at them: ‘OK, what did you do wrong?’ ‘Can you tell me why I’m not happy with you?’ might be another phrase I’d use. Or ‘Can you tell me what was wrong with that?’ Or ‘What choice did you make? Why was that not a good choice?’”
Beaudean is glad that as a private school teacher, she was able to teach religion along with secular subjects.
“I wouldn’t say a Catholic school is any better than a public school,” Beaudean said. “The thing that’s better about it is that you’re able to live your faith out. That’s what I tried to do with my teaching ability. That’s what I’ve tried to give students through the years. ... I tried to give my students the knowledge about God and Jesus, and also that he’s their friend and they can turn to him at any time.”