Inez Jackson Phillips taught for 42 years at Balfour Elementary School, making advancements in physical education and endearing herself to students.

The Dana native taught science, in grades 4-6. She was county teacher of the year, in 1983. She started at Balfour in 1958. Back then, her students took turns reading a paragraph out of books on problem-solving adventures of Tom Sawyer or Heidi. She said that round robin reading was “the highlight of their day.” She similarly had students take turns reading social studies and science lessons out loud.

“Mrs. Phillips taught the unteachable, loved all children, and encouraged each and every child to do and be their very best,” Balfour media specialist Susie Brown said. She recalled her daughter raving about their “cool science experiment” in Phillips’ fifth-grade class. “She made learning fun, and made lifelong learners out of her students.”
Her students were among highest grade-level performers in the entire school system. She helped Balfour get accredited by the Southern Association of Elementary Schools and Colleges. She was an early proponent of computer use by students. “She was an outstanding teacher, and leader in the school,” said Corum Smith, one of four of her Balfour principals. The first was a future superintendent, Glenn Marlow. Smith describes her as “loyal and dedicated,” a role model to colleagues for “professionalism.”

Mrs. Phillips was lead teacher in developing an elementary physical education program. It propelled Balfour into select status, as a statewide demonstration school in the Seventies. The program featured a “designed run,” for which students chose a theme for their running. Like a football coach, she designed formations out of which they’d run. She choreographed the tempo to music. She judged how students did.

Also, classes competed against each other in the designed run in a special event. Her class regularly won. “That was a big deal to the children, and hundreds of parents who attended,” Smith said. Mrs. Phillips said the designed run gave students “a new spice of life, away from the winter doldrums.” That especially helped one winter, when snowed-out school days were made up on seven straight Saturdays.

She studied in Trevecca Nazarene University in Nashville, Tenn. then Goerge Peabody College, earning an AB in education and psychology in 1958.

At Balfour, she “gleaned any ideas and methods” from colleagues. Faculty felt a “family togetherness.” She recalled Glenn Marlow as principal solving an off-hours act of vandalism. “Someone had shot a hole into a window of my classroom,” she said. “He figured where it came form, and knew who lived above there. He was that observant.” She said Smith was “very conscientious and caring. He said we were the best. And we believed him.”

She relished the Thanksgiving tradition of people preparing turkey dinners at the school for the Balfour community. Many were mill families, at what is now Kimberly-Clark. Late-shift workers got meals delivered to them.
Now, she gives biographies of newly-retired educators honored into Henderson County Retired School Personnel.
She said it was a “blessing to teach all of those lovely children. Now, I see what they have accomplished. Many are ministers, educators and in other important fields. It’s very gratifying.”

Yet she gets a more immediate reward, staying on as an educator. She’s volunteered as a reading tutor at both Clear Creek and Dana Elementary Schools, and is a private after-school tutor. “Reading is important, in any field,” she observes. “It’s rewarding when I work with them, to see how they progress by the end of the year.” For Inez Jackson Phillips, education remains a lifelong mission.