As Carla Evans prepares for her retirement from Flossmoor Hills School, she feels like her 25 years there have gone by in a blink of an eye.
Evans, who lives in the Flossmoor Hills neighborhood, said she took the job because it would allow her to have free time with her son, Nick, who at the time was 4 years old.
(Marilyn Thomas/H-F Chronicle)
But before she chose to join the staff, Evans came to visit the school. That was all she needed.
“I just liked when I came people were just very friendly. That helped to make my final decision. When you come here you find out that the atmosphere is calm, for the most part,” she said.
Over these 25 years, Evans knows she has been the beneficiary of great camaraderie. The staff is very caring, like a family.
“We do our work. We make sure everything is done well, but it just had a good feel,” she said.
Evans has been a media paraprofessional serving in the school’s library. She especially enjoyed reading to the kindergarten, first and second graders. It was something she did as a preschool teacher on a military base in Germany where her husband served.
The funny voices and sounds she made for characters in the books was her way of charming kids into enjoying books and reading.
For Evans, bringing books to life like that took her back to her earliest days performing on stages around Chicago. She sang and entertained. She looks back and thinks that in some ways that was practice for her role in the library.
She would always be disappointed to hear a child say they didn’t like to read. The usual response was reading is boring, so Evans would coax a student to take a book or two (their choice) and try it “just to discover what’s going on in the story.” She’d suggest they trying reading to their mom saying, “I know she’d be so proud of you.”
It generally worked. Once a child was motivated by Evans and inspired by a story, she delighted in seeing them come back to the library for more books.
“I like what I do. I love the children, I have a good rapport with many of the parents,” she said. It is especially pleasing to her when students or Flossmoor Hills School graduates who see her in the community come by to say hello.
“That makes me feel good,” Evans said. For her, it’s a reminder that her initial interaction with the student went well.
