28-year veteran educator retires from RMS
RUSSELLVILLE Longtime educator Diane Townley has retired after 28 years with Russellville City Schools.
Her primary teaching focus was mathematics, mostly eighth grade and pre-algebra, though she has also taught seventh grade.
“Ever since I was little, that’s what I wanted to do,” Townley said of her decision to teach. “When you teach somebody something and see them actually get it, the impact of that is very rewarding.”
She described middle school as “a very sweet and awkward stage,” adding there’s “never a dull moment.” She said she thinks middle school students get a bad reputation, but they’re “really good kids just trying to adjust and have fun along the way.”
Townley said her approach to teaching middle school students was “a lot of patience and understanding.”
“It’s not as bad as people think,” she said of teaching middle school, “but it’s challenging. They’re sweet kids and you never know what they might be going through.”
Townley graduated from Winfield High School. She has been living in Russellville since 1989.
Following high school, Townley attended the Fayette campus of Bevill State Community College while working parttime at Citizens Bank in Winfield.
When she and her husband, Tim, moved to Red Bay for two years, she took a couple of classes at the Phil Campbell campus of Northwest Community College. She finished her degree at the University of North Alabama. Her area of study was math and computer science, as well as education.
Her first job after college was teaching math on a part-time basis for one year at Northwest Community College in Phil Campbell. Following that, she worked at TVA for five years in the Atmospheric Sciences Department, where she did statistical computer programming for quality studies.
From there, she went to Russellville Middle School in 1997, where she remained for the rest of her career.
In the fall of 2017, she moved from teaching math to teaching career preparedness for about six years. She later taught one more year of math.
While the majority of her teaching years were spent in math classes, her last few years mostly involved teaching electives – career preparedness (interviewing, resumes, how to dress, etc.), RCS Explorations (a locally developed course to explore areas including the history of Russellville and of Franklin County) and art.
She considers art, which she taught at RMS during her last year of working, as being “the most fun” of the electives because of the hands-on activities, general enjoyment and seeing the students be more engaged.
“With career preparedness, I enjoyed seeing the kids become interested in their futures, seeing their likes and dislikes careerwise, and getting to witness the progression of them going from just kids to having more adult ways of thinking and considering,” Townley said.
“We have had amazing administrators the whole time,” Townley said of her time at RMS, “and I’ve loved working there. I love my coworkers, and it’s just a great group of teachers and staff.
“I’ve been fortunate to have taught a lot of my students’ children and to see them come through and become great adults raising wonderful children, so it’s very rewarding,” she added.
Townley said she plans to spend more time with her children and grandchildren and try to get in better health.
