This world has lost an extraordinary woman. Jane Sharp was a vibrant woman with a love for family, for friends, for children, for good teaching, for well-organized schools, for learning through schooling, reading, discussion and travel, and for gardening. She was upbeat, optimistic, and curious. Finding a photo of Jane without a smile on her face is rare.
Jane Jackson Sharp, born in Jesup, GA in 1941, died at the age of 82 of heart failure on December 11, 2023, at the Piedmont Medical Center in Rock Hill, SC. She retired in 2008 as Principal at Bellevue and Finley Road Elementaries. Then Dr. Sharp served on the Rock Hill School Board from 2010 to 2018. Her campaign slogan: A strong voice for our children.
She also advocated for changes in teaching routines that she had successfully used in her last years as a principal to enhance teacher teamwork and to improve student scores on state exams. The AVERAGE score on math and reading tests for her whole school jumped by 10%. Teacher morale improved because together they were seeing learning results that they had not been able to achieve working alone. To learn more, google Professional Learning Communities based on Rick DuFour’s methodology.
Jane did not plan to become an educator. She majored in history at Carson-Newman College because she found the education courses on offer boring. After a year of working as a secretary, she decided teaching was preferable and attended Butler University in Indianapolis to earn certification. She never gave up her love of history.
Jane taught second grade until the 1968 birth in Milledgeville GA of her daughter Ellen Sharp (now living in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico). At that time Georgia had freedom of choice for students. Five black children had enrolled in her previously all-white school. For a course paper she interviewed those families to understand why they sent their children to the white school. She found the black schools had no busing, dirt floors, coal stoves for heating, out-of-date cast-off textbooks, and teachers at half salary compared to those in the white system. This injustice and the courage of those parents and students made her a strong advocate of equal treatment for all teachers and students. Her book club friends know she often chose race relations and civil rights books for her presentations. She also worked to register voters and in political campaigns supporting those who fought for fairness and urged others to become involved.
Because she had some students with psychological difficulties and because she loved serious academic study, she enrolled in the University of South Carolina Psychology Department in 1972 and earned a PhD in School Psychology. For a decade she worked as a school psychologist in Richland District One in Columbia, SC. Jane realized too often conventional testing gave children lower placement labels that could be avoided if only the child had stronger teachers. A mentor suggested she needed only a few additional courses to become a principal where she would have greater influence over the quality of teachers hired and the on-the-job training after hiring.
After earning administrative certification, Jane almost immediately became an assistant principal and acting principal in Richland District One. She then moved with her husband to Dayton, OH, to become principal at Loos Elementary, a science school. In 1998 she moved to Rock Hill to become a principal at Finley Road and to be closer to her parents because her father was ill.
Jane loved to travel and to learn from her visits. In photos you often see her with a guidebook in hand. With her husband they visited thirty-seven countries on five continents as well as much of the United States, with New York and California being US favorites. She learned that most everywhere in the world people wanted much the same thing – to live a normal life – and that many different systems produced good results.
Jane is survived by her loving husband of 60 years John, her daughter Ellen, her younger sister Carol Brady (Mike) and their sons Sean (Casey) and Erin (Anne) and children, an aunt, uncle and many cousins, sons and daughters-in-law, and a loving community of friends. She led a remarkable life and will be deeply missed.
Condolences can be made at greenefuneralhome.net.