Holcomb molded county’s readers from youth

    Marble – Over her  years as a teacher, Dr. Linda Holcomb taught many young children in Cherokee County how to read. One of her favorite memories was while she was doing volunteer work, an older woman asked her to teach her.
    “She wanted to know how to read the Bible,” Holcomb remembered. “And she wanted to know how to read the hymnals they had.”
    The woman, Mary, couldn’t read a word. She had memorized the hymns and would pretend to read along with everyone else. She didn’t want anyone to know she couldn’t read. Holcomb taught her to read by using the Bible.
    “She and I became faith partners,” Holcomb said. “After a while, she was reading. She was reading a lot of the Bible.”
    Holcomb said moments like that – where she made a difference in a person’s life – made life worthwhile.
    “There’s a reason why you’re here,” she said.
    Holcomb started teaching in 1974 at Murphy Elementary School. Her husband was the band director, and she figured that’s how she got hired. She started in a Title 1 position, teaching reading in small groups.
    She then moved on to a pod situation, where she and three other teachers shared 100 students, and eventually got a self-contained classroom of her own 25 students. After taking time off to have a child in 1980, Holcomb became a teacher at Andrews Elementary School.
    In the 1990s, she was asked to head a reading recovery program, and was trained in Asheville for it. For the program, she’d get to work one on one with a child.
    “You can make great gains with that,” Holcomb said, adding that the program was highly successful. “It was just great.”
    She shared what she was taught to develop the program with other elementary teachers in the county. She then received trained in Clemson for diagnosing reading issues and became Cherokee County’s reading diagnostician.
    In 2010, she retired – but she didn’t want to.
    Through those last years of teaching, she was going to Western Carolina University for professional development with three other teachers from Cherokee County. The four would travel to the college one night a week, take classes for four or five hours, then be at work teaching children the next morning. She wasn’t serious about it, but by 2010 she had earned a doctorate degree.
    She continues to teach teachers taking master’s and doctorate-level courses at Walden University and Liberty University. She’s been teaching online courses on how to effectively teach reading for the schools, starting in 2005 for Walden and 2010 for Liberty.
    “I’m still hoping to roll out some really good teachers,” Holcomb said.
    She said online teaching is compatible with her lifestyle, as she can teach from anywhere, whether she’s in Marble or Florida. She said she also enjoys being able to continue teaching, even though she misses the kids. As soon as her grandchildren were ready, she was right there teaching them how to read.
    Her favorite part of teaching was teaching the little ones how to read, as they became more independent and built their self-esteem.
    “I love children,” Holcomb said. “I was really fortunate to be put in a program where I could really help children.”
    There was one little girl who she had spent a semester teaching in the reading recovery program. After she completed the program, the girl would come to Holcomb’s classroom often asking for books to read. Soon it became difficult for Holcomb to find a book the little girl hadn’t read yet.
    “She said, ‘You don’t have any books for me to read, do ya?’ ” Holcomb recalled.
    She enjoys seeing former students doing well in the community, and them remembering her as the person who taught them how to read.
    “If you want a meaningful career, teaching is where you want to go,” Holcomb said.
    “It’s been a long career. It was enjoyable. It was meaningful.”