Fincher named to BPS Foundation Educator Hall of Fame
Jean Fincher’s introduction to teaching occurred in Peru, so it is only fitting that she ultimately became a dedicated social studies teacher with an unparalleled ability to incorporate her worldly experiences into her lessons to effectively engage her students.
She is one of four retired educators who will be inducted into the Bartlesville Educator Hall of Fame April 27 at the Bartlesville Community Center.
Fincher was born in Denoya, Oklahoma, which in the 1920s was known as Whizbang and was an infamous oil boomtown. Her family left Denoya when she was a toddler and eventually settled in Valley Center, Kansas where she attended school until the ninth grade. Her family then moved to Drumright, Oklahoma. It was there that she first met Don Fincher, her future husband.
After high school, she went to business school, worked in Tulsa as a secretary, got married, and worked in Stillwater while Don completed his engineering degree. After Don graduated, the couple, with their infant son Mark, moved to Cartagena, Colombia, where Don worked for an international oil company, and their second son, Derrel, was born. After two years in Colombia, the couple moved to Aruba and then Talara, Peru.
Talara was where Fincher got her first taste of teaching, as a substitute teacher of English for Peruvian students in a Peruvian/American school. The principal of the school recognized Jean’s talent, and both the principal and Jean's husband encouraged her to consider a teaching degree.
Prompted by this encouragement, she and her husband moved their two boys back to Stillwater, where Fincher pursued a degree in education at Oklahoma State University. Despite being an atypical student with a family at home and a lot of life experience, she was recognized for having the highest GPA among first-year education majors.
After her husband’s job required moving to Borger, Texas, she commuted to finish her degree at West Texas State University, where she was inducted into Alpha Chi National Honor Society. She taught upper-elementary grades for four years in Borger before moving to Bartlesville and teaching at Jane Phillips Elementary. One year she spent half of her day teaching sixth-grade reading classes and the other half teaching Head Start. She remembers this divide as a challenge that developed an admiration of early-childhood specialists.
Fincher does not identify herself as “sweet enough” to work with very young children, confessing that she often had to cheat when teaching rhyming games because she did not know her nursery rhymes.
A few years later, she moved to Wilson Elementary to teach sixth grade for nine years. She speaks fondly of the time when there was one virtually self-contained class per grade with highly involved families.
The 1980s brought significant transitions in education and Fincher’s sixth-grade students were at Wilson, then Highland Park, back to Wilson, and then shifted to Madison Middle School. She requested to shift to Central Middle School and taught sixth-grade social studies there until her retirement in 1991.
Both before and after retirement, Fincher traveled internationally. She visited several Western European countries while touring, but her longest visits were in countries where her sons’ families resided: Japan, China, Norway, Trinidad-Tobago, and Brazil. Return visits of these families, with four grandchildren in the mix, kept the Finchers’ Bartlesville home happily busy during many summers and holidays. Jean now has four great-grandchildren.
After her sons left for college, Fincher became busy outside the classroom, serving as president of the Washington County OSU Alumni Club and on the boards of the Friends of the Library and of the Oklahoma Division of the American Association of University Women (AAUW). She was named Woman of the Year by the Bartlesville branch of AAUW. She has consistently stayed active in her church. Prior to the illness and death of her husband in 2010, she also trained and volunteered briefly as an early-settlement mediator.
When reflecting on her time in the classroom, Fincher loved seeing her students connect the classroom lessons to the real world. To foster those connections and keep her students engaged, she brought in guest speakers, including World War II veterans, writers, musicians, and a Taiwanese gentleman who spoke fluent Mandarin and had helped open business connections with Communist China. Fincher is excited to be a part of an event that supports the Bartlesville Public Schools Foundation, since the Foundation supported her and her colleagues during their careers.
The Bartlesville Public Schools Foundation has been investing in students and staff members within the district since 1985. Over the decades, the non-profit organization has funded more than $3 million in creative projects outside of the traditional state, local and federal sources to support state-of-the-art instruction. The money generated by the Hall of Fame induction ceremonies on April 27, 2023, will help fund the organization’s programs. A $1,000 grant in Fincher’s name will also go to a school or department of Ms. Fincher’s choice.
This event is open to the public and tickets are available for $35 through the BPS Foundation’s website: https://bpsfoundation.org/educator-hall-of-fame/
This article originally appeared on Bartlesville Examiner-Enterprise: Fincher named to BPS Foundation Educator Hall of Fame
