Huron County View

Couple taps-out at 69 years of educating experience




Clark and Marcia Brock have a combined 69 years of educating experience. Photo by Ben Muir

Clark and Marcia Brock have a combined 69 years of educating experience. Photo by Ben Muir

BAD AXE – Teaching is not a thankless job.

Clark and Marcia Brock, who will have been married 40 years this week, have a combined 69 years of experience as educators. They were asked recently what inspired them to continue working as teachers despite the job being thankless at times.

“It’s not a thankless job,” Marcia said.

“Not at all,” responded her husband.

Clark has officially retired from educating after 39 years. His wife, Marcia, retired from teaching in Harbor Beach three years ago – she logged 30 years.

The couple met in the 4-H high school club. And on Sunday, they will have been married 40 years. There’s got to be a secret.

“Everybody wants to know that,” Marcia said on what keeps it together. “But I don’t know.”

“I think,” Clark said, “it’s the fact we’ve done things together in education for 40 years.”

Clark got a job shortly after college teaching agriculture in North Huron in 1983. Marcia would joke saying she followed him there reluctantly. In reality, she had family in the area and was anxious to move back.

Clark continued teaching agriculture and managed FFA for 16 years until the principal’s position became open, of which he was convinced to take.

He principled in North Huron for five years but didn’t enjoy it, so he went back to teaching, even if that meant doing everything like computer classes, science teaching, physical education, athletic director.

And then an opening for principal of the Huron Area Technical Center in Bad Axe became vacant in 2008.

“I had close friends who said ‘you need to go for that,’” Brock said, “and my first response was ‘I didn’t like being a principal to begin with.”

Clark ended up taking the tech position. Marcia was skeptical of the move.

“North Huron was our home,” she said. “Our kids both went to school there – kindergarten through graduation. We had a lot of friends and were very comfortable with that school. I was very hesitant about making the move, but in the end it has turned out to be a very good thing.”

Clark spent 11 years as principal, all of which he would constitute as a success.

In working with high school students all their career, Clark and Marcia, who both have a college degree, know what they tell young people who are deciding whether to attend a four-year university or try something different.

“Neither one is better than the other,” Clark said. “Kids today need to understand that there are a multitude of opportunities out there, good-paying opportunities you don’t have to have a four-year degree to get. I wouldn’t tell any student not to do either, but they need to have a goal.”

Marcia had a variety of students in her career. She taught life skills and health in her first 20 years and then special education in her last 10.

“A four-year degree is not for everybody,” she said. “There are so many people that have four-year degrees that they finish and they don’t like what they have, or the job opportunities aren’t there.”

As for the problems Clark faced in the school system, he said folks are adapting to the structure of families have changing.

“When we moved up here 40 years ago,” he said, “probably 70-75 percent of the kids in the schools came from farm families. And today: 15 percent. You don’t have the same ideals and parenting skills you had 40 years ago.”

When asked the hardest part of being a teacher, Clark and Marcia gave and answer that was questioned multiple times and yet their answer never wavered.

“Walking away at the end of the day,” Marcia said of the hardest part. “It was so hard to leave my job.”

Her husband darted-in: “Those kids are your life.”

Marcia said that after 30 years, it doesn’t matter the if it’s students from your first year or your last, “they’re still my kids.”

“And then as you do this for that many years you’re getting your former students’ children,” she said. “Which is very interesting.”

Teaching has changed the way they parent as well, Clark said.

“I think so – we have two sons,” Clark said of their sons Kevin and Kyle. “Our sons came through school with their parents as, and I don’t want to boast, prominent educators. We would say to them ‘remember who you are, and remember who we are.’ Our kids were great kids, involved, good students and the likes, but they were still kids.”

Lane Walker, who’s been vice principal at the tech school for the last four years, will be replacing Clark. Walker will also be the Career Tech Ed director for the county, a position Clark held as well.

“He is going to do a great job,” Clark said.

Clark retired because he thinks, especially with educators, they know when it’s time to pass on the gavel.

“It’s funny,” he said, “because I can’t ever remember saying to Marcia ‘I don’t want to go to work.’ But for the last year, when you have long weekends, it would be harder to go back.”

Heading into retirement, Clark and Marcia don’t know what they plan to do, and they don’t really care. Clark has a glass etching business, they travel a little and they have three grandchildren.

“I used to tell people my dream job in retirement was sit me on the seat of a tractor and drive me back and forth across that field,” Clark said. “No one badgering me or giving me paperwork. But we’ll see, I don’t really have a true plan yet.”