JULY 20, 2018, KEIZERTIMES, PAGE A3
KeizerCommunity
KEIZERTIMES.COM
Roberson retires at McNary
By DEREK WILEY
Of the Keizertimes
Three days after Kathleen
Roberson submitted her
resume, McNary
High
School called.
“I was surprised that
they would be so interested
in someone for biology,”
Roberson thought.
But
McNary
had
something else in mind.
“They saw I did computer
programming and that’s how
I got the job here,” Roberson
said. “I thought about it for
about two years as I was
teaching computer science
and wishing I was in biology,
then I turned around one day
and said this is fun. I’d be a
fool to go back to science.”
Roberson
taught
computer programming for
26 years at McNary before
retiring last month.
“I like puzzles and kids
who like puzzles, it’s nice
to give them good things to
be able to wrap their heads
around,” Roberson said.
“The kids are the fun part.
Working with kids, you’re
alive everyday. You’ve got to
be on your toes, you’ve got
to remember what you’re
doing.”
Roberson grew up in San
Diego.
When her parents urged
all three of their kids to go to
college in states they’d never
been to, Roberson chose
New Mexico.
“Most of the good
things that happened in my
life came out of that,” said
“I like puzzles
and kids who
like puzzles.”
— Kathleen Roberson
Roberson, which included
meeting her husband, also a
teacher.
Roberson followed her
mother into the profession
and taught science for three
years in New Mexico before
deciding to move to Oregon.
“Albuquerque
is
a
beautiful place but parts of it
are quite scary and we didn’t
want to raise our three kids
there,” Roberson said.
“My dad’s family was in
Washington and we’d been
through Oregon a million
times and just thought it was
beautiful.”
With
advances
in
technology, Roberson had
to relearn her subject every
three years.
“I’ve done it for so long
that now I’m alert as things
pop up and start trying to
fi gure out what are the
universities
doing
with
this, is this going to be the
wave of the future, once a
new language comes out,”
Roberson said.
“There are three or four
colleges that I’ve always
checked every year to fi nd
out what has changed
and what hasn’t. What’s
The Piper
Kathleen Roberson works with McNary High School student Jonathan Lopez-Ventura in one of her computer programming
classes. Roberson is retiring after 26 years at the school.
interesting is there are some
problem solving things that
are the same year after year.
They haven’t found a better
way to do them.”
Roberson
taught
computer languages, starting
students with BASIC, then
moving to Java and Unity.
“The geeks of the world
have a place to come and
they should,” Roberson
said. “I’ve got a good many
software engineers out there
that send me emails once in
a while.”
One is a professor teaching
computer science at George
Washington University.
“He sent me an email out
of the blue and I hadn’t seen
him in probably 20 years
and it was so nice to see
and I went to his website at
the university and I could
understand one word in three
of the titles of the papers he’d
written,” said Roberson,
who replied, “I’m very proud
of you. I don’t know what
you do, but I’m glad you’re
doing it.”
Roberson knew it was
time to retire after constantly
being sick in the fall.
“As you get older there
are weaknesses and you
start to pick up germs a lot
faster,” she said. “When I was
sick constantly, higher level
thinking goes away. When
you’re teaching computer
science, that’s a cheat to the
kids, because they need me at
my best.”
While Roberson will miss
the kids, she will have more
time to focus on her writing.
She’s written fi ve books
including At Rist of Being a
Fool about her experiences
teaching in Albuquerque, and
four fantasy novels.
Roberson is moving to
Washington to be closer
to her two sons and
grandchildren. She also wants
to travel more.
“Sometime in the next
year or two I want to go to
the Kentucky Derby for real
instead of watching it on TV,”
Roberson said.
“The fi rst year (1973) I
watched, Secretariat took the
triple crown.”
Her other hobbies include
making baby quilts.
“It’s a geometric thing that
helps me be calm, putting
pieces together to make a
pattern, which is really all
programming is, in its own
way,” Roberson said.