Linda Niles ’73 graduated from Wichita’s East High School in 1965 — and she’s still there, proof that reading Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? aloud is the best way to wake up.
After earning a master’s degree in student personnel and guidance from Wichita State and 15 years in counseling, Niles made a career change: “I decided I needed to return to my first love — English.”
So she took a $10,000 pay cut to teach, which was, she says, “One of my best life decisions.” She has taught since 1980, all grades, all levels.
She currently teaches seniors in the International Baccalaureate program. Together, they read Shakespeare and modern drama and ponder the acronym BLOTTERPUPS. (It’s a secret.) She also travels in Europe with students every summer or two.
Although some of the literary works she teaches are dark, her attitude towards them is anything but. This irreverence prompted the class of 1998 to give her farewell gifts of yellow shoes and yellow roses — shoes that, in Friedrich Durrenmatt’s The Visit, symbolize corrupting wealth; the roses, symbolic of infidelity, are from Sam Shepard’s disturbing Buried Child.
She remarks, “I believe in having fun in class, but don’t feel there’s anything wrong in kids understanding that learning is hard work.” Work made easier by a teacher like Linda Niles.
