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She has taught countless kids to read, Now it’s time to move on after a half century in the classroom.

For Cathy Otto, teaching is more than a career. It was her calling. She said she knew she wanted to teach since she was five years old. She has loved it, and still does, but now it’s time to call it quits after 50 years.

“It’s never been a job,” Otto said, “Honestly, I told a principal one time, ‘I really think I could just work here without any pay.’”

Throughout her 50 years in teaching, Mrs. Cathy, as her students call her, has worked in both public schools and private at LaGrange Academy. Cathy began teaching at Eastside Primary and eventually at Hollis Hand Elementary, where she retired for the first time after 30 years. After her first retirement, she couldn’t stay away and returned to teaching at LaGrange Academy, where she taught for another 20 years.

Teaching is really what she wanted to do in life, and she never really wanted to move up the educational ladder, though she did later get an Administration degree. She said she never wanted to be a principal.

“They asked me to be a data collector and go out into schools and collect data on teachers who were teaching. I was only 28 years old. I thought, well, this is a great opportunity. I couldn’t wait to get back in the classroom,” she said.

Otto said that after five decades in teaching, she decided this year would be her last and return home to her husband, but he passed away in October. She said she briefly considered staying on, but the Academy had already planned to turn over next year’s kindergarten class to her friend and coworker Jane Hudson, and she did not want to do that to her. 

Hudson is hoping to continue Otto’s legacy in the kindergarten class at LaGrange Academy,

“I want to continue the great legacy that she’s left behind because she’s done such a great job. She hasn’t done everything just cookie-cutter. She’s added, and added, and added.”

So many children have gone through Otto’s class. Many of them end up being the children or grandchildren of her former students. She has taught nearly every student at the school to read, including those graduating on Friday.

For the children who needed to improve their reading, Otto stayed late to tutor those who needed extra help, Hudson said.

After 50 years of teaching, you would think that a teacher would get set in their ways, especially at 73, but Mrs. Cathy handled changes in teaching like a champ, especially during COVID, when she had to teach both kids in the classroom and those at home remotely.

“One of the biggest things is that as teachers kind of get older, I think they do kind of sometimes get in the mundane. Not her. She’s one of the most encouraging teachers I’ve ever worked with and has still kept that up. She’s such an encourager,” Hudson said. “The best thing that she’s done for children, besides teaching them to read, is that she’s encouraged them to be the best that they could be. And that’s a big deal in kindergarten.”

Otto said she doesn’t have any specific retirement plans, but she plans to go where God leads her, a path she has tried to follow her whole life.

“I’m going to find my purpose in life, and it’s going to be God’s purpose, because He’s the reason I’m here now, because growing up, things were very difficult for my family, I’m the only one who has a college degree. My two older sisters went back when they were 30 and 40, and my mother couldn’t send me,” Otto said.

Though she dreamed of being a teacher since she was young, Otto went to work right after high school because she didn’t think she could afford college. A friend later told her how she could get student loans and work her way through, changing her life.

“Right out of high school, I went to the hospital to work as a switchboard operator. They don’t even have those anymore. My mother knew I wanted to be a teacher, but she was a single mom, raising three girls, working at Playtex,” Otto said, explaining her mother wanted to send her and her sister to college, but they couldn’t afford it.

 “God sent this friend to me who said they just graduated from LaGrange College. I said, ‘Oh, my dream was to be a teacher, but I won’t be able to, but I’m going to work, and one day it’ll happen.’” Otto said. “She took me to the college and told whoever she was doing the work study for to give me her job, and then she took me to the financial aid person and helped me fill out all the financial aid.”

“She’s deceased now, but she was really special to me. I know that she came into my life, but I know it was God,” Otto said.

“I’m just thankful that I’ve had this opportunity to work with the best and to serve children and to serve God for 50 years. It has been a blessing to be here, and it’s hard to leave the good people I love,” she said.