Barbara Mathis Stepp utilized animals, music, her own modeling and class tasks to entertain and train her Balfour kindergarten students.

She taught at Balfour from 1979 until it ceased as an elementary in 2002, then for two years at new Clear Creek before retiring. She livened up her classes, illustrating what she taught through sight and sound. She dressed up as the color of the day. She instructed through songs with rhyme and rhythm. She notes that in absorbing music “you use both sides of your brains.”

Most fun, students recall, was playing with farm animals she brought to class such as a pot-bellied pig that rumbled from courtyard to their room and squealed to be fed, or pygmy goat that jumped on tables to “tap dance.” A boy brought a hen for her rooster. She improvised, using a popcorn popper to incubate eggs. She kept pet pigs at home. Her grandmother Cora Hollifield, who taught, had many farm animals in Marion where Barbara grew up. She noted both “children and animals are truthful.” And quick learners. Responsibility emerged, as students cared for the critters. They nourished a newborn pig, warmed up a baby possum, or cleaned a rabbit cage.

For an after-school treat, Mrs. Stepp drew student names to see who’d next bake and eat chocolate chip cookies in her home. “If you make learning fun,” she said, “then it’s fun to learn. We did a lot of fun projects.” For instance, children made a full-sized elephant, out of poster and bulletin-board paper. The put sponges on their feet, dipped into grey paint, and walked on the paper. They decorated T-shirts that way. “Her creative mind went into overdrive, finding fun ways of turning the teaching into learning,” her daughters Tiffany Marshall and Tamara Miller said.

“Barbara was a real ‘diamond in the rough,’ and blessed with a special love for young children and an extraordinary gift of creativity,” longtime Balfour principal Corum Smith said. He said from her eagerness to “think outside the box, to explore new approaches ... her classroom became a beehive of exciting, creative and wonderful opportunities.”

She got Mike Pressley, her principal at Balfour and Clear Creek noted, to dress in a bunny suit. He said her children learned via “senses of seeing, touching and hearing” and with resources ranging from “live animals to cooking, from building with wooden blocks to role-playing. All of which challenged her students, to wonder and explore.”
Mrs. Stepp put on a year-end student talent show. Students dressed as nursery rhyme characters or animals. They danced, dribbled a basketball, or showed artwork. They demonstrated her prime notion that every individual can develop special talent.

Many reached strong potentials, such as Barbara Case Blaine’s daughter Alison. Alison graduated from Duke then Harvard, and teaches in the N.C. School of Science and Math. Schools’ Executive Administrative Asst. Blaine lauds Mrs. Stepp’s “loving and nurturing” and sparking Alison’s “insatiable love of books.”

Mrs. Stepp adapted teaching styles. She mainstreamed hearing-impaired students. Her entire class learned basic sign language. She taught computers, to other teachers including Patsy Farmer Jones who admires her knowing the “latest technology.” Mrs. Stepp was also the school tooth puller.

Earlier, she was a student teacher assisting Hillandale’s Ethlyn Byrd, who called her a “powerful teacher, very intuitive and confident.”

Mrs. Stepp multi-tasked, to fulfill her own potential. Married with two young daughters, she worked teaching church youth and then as a teacher’s assistant in Balfour in 1973-75. But at Smith’s urging she left to study full-time at UNC-Asheville, earning a B.A. in sociology with K-3 teaching certification in 1979. She was promptly hired to teach at Balfour. A year later, on the side, she earned her master’s in early childhood education.

Ever creative, Mrs. Stepp recently designed an adult bib from a man’s shirt for a local rest home. She tutors Clear Creek fifth-grade students, and spurred goodwill. They collected 300 beanie babies, for children in war-torn Middle Eastern villages. Her son-in-law is HonorAir founder Jeff Miller.

Her three grandchildren all play soccer, with Beck Miller and Hank Marshall winning a state crown with Hendersonville High in 2009. This is a creative family. Tamara has made crafts, Tiffany designs clothes. Beck designed the logo for the team’s soccer shirts, showing further ingenuity