For every student at Henderson Community College who has needed a little help settling into what college life is all about, there is a Doris Cherry. That is, there is someone who will help them refine or develop their math skills, and someone who will help them understand what to look for when reading a college textbook. The woman whose own mother was a teacher in a one-room schoolhouse is also the person who teaches her students about the importance of time management, note taking and listening skills. “I think it can be a difficult transition for some of the high school students to come from high school into college because of the differences,” Cherry said, adding that, for example, “We aren’t going to collect everything that has been assigned.” The Evansville resident teaches what she described as developmental education for students who may not have learned the material well enough in high school. She also often teaches non-traditional students, such as working parents who are returning to college after years spent away from school. The students in her classes first take a test that determines their ability so that teachers like Cherry have a better sense of what their students’ skills are. “You have different ages and different levels of ability, and it’s a real challenge to try to meet the needs of these students and try to reach them all,” Cherry said. Thankfully, the graduate of Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, Ill., and Western Illinois University in Macomb, Ill., has always been prepared to use different techniques to pique the interest of her students. “I always tell them I want to have fun in class because, when I stop having fun, I need to quit,” Cherry said. “I try to relate things to real life situations.” For instance, she described an assignment where she had students choose articles about topics they were interested in. Those articles were then collected and distributed to the class. “We did (reading) exercises with those, and it was a good variety,” she said, adding that some articles worked better for building vocabulary, while others were good examples of how to outline a topic. “They have a stake in it, they own it.” The woman who has worked at HCC since August 1988 and at Black Hawk College in Moline, Ill., before that often changes her teaching styles. Cherry said at Black Hawk College, she was the coordinator of an independent learning center that was offering alternative ways for students to learn before modern Internet-based courses — like having professors record their lectures on cassette tape, or having the faculty create workbooks for students that were tailored to particular classes. These days, however, regardless of which particular techniques Cherry uses, the end goal is the same. “It is really helping the students (because) otherwise they would be jumping in, perhaps, in a course that they couldn’t possibly succeed in because they don’t have the background,” she said. And it doesn’t just help the students. The professors who will later teach the students who succeed in Cherry’s courses know their students will have the background needed to do well in those courses. The work Cherry does “is a win-win situation for everybody.” In what could be considered a sign of just how valued her efforts are, Cherry received the outstanding educator award from the Kentucky Association for Developmental Education at its annual conference in eastern Kentucky recently. She said it is very meaningful to her that her peers and colleagues would honor her so. “It acknowledges my work,” Cherry said. “I feel that I have done a lot in the field of developmental education and a lot with my students. I hope they see that I get enjoyment from what I do from working with students.”
