GIFT OF TWO TEACHERS

Pope Prep celebrates the ‘gift’ of two founding teachers

written by Andy Telli photographs by Saul Buda ‘18

reprinted with permission from the Tennessee Register, originally published May 13, 2022

Karen Phillips and Betty Mayberry, two key members of Pope John Paul II Preparatory School’s founding faculty that shaped the school’s culture from its establishment through its first two decades, were lauded by family, friends, colleagues and students at a dinner held Friday, May 6.

“What a gift these ladies have been to this community,” said Faustin Weber, a former headmaster of Pope Prep who is now the principal at St. Michael Catholic High School in Fairhope, Alabama.

“I am so very grateful to this community and to God for providing me an opportunity I could not have imagined,” said Phillips, who was the school’s first dean of studies. She was planning to retire at the end of this school year but has accepted the position of interim head of school for the next year while the school searches for a new leader.

Phillips and Mayberry have known each other since their teen years when their families lived a few houses apart in Gallatin. Mayberry’s first teaching job was filling in for Phillips leading her sixth-grade class for two weeks. Later, they were colleagues at Gallatin High School, where Phillips was the department chair for social studies and Mayberry chair of the math department.

Both were hired by Hans Broekman, Pope Prep’s founding headmaster, in 2001 to help open a new diocesan Catholic high school in Hendersonville. “I am so blessed that God has designed such a wonderful plan for my life,” Mayberry told the more than 300 people who attended the dinner at Our Lady of the Lake Church in Hendersonville, hosted by the Pope Prep Board of Trustees.

“Who would have thought that just when I was contemplating retirement from the Sumner County schools and was convinced that God was closing the door on my teaching career, Karen Phillips calls again?” said Mayberry, who retired from Pope Prep at the end of the 2020-21 school year.

“I had no intention of leaving Gallatin, but after spending 30 minutes with Hans and realizing his vision for this school, I knew then that God had a different plan for me,” said Mayberry, who was the school’s first math department chair.

When Mayberry joined the Pope Prep faculty, she was attracted by the challenge of building a math department from scratch, she said. “It took us all working together: parents, colleagues, students, friends and family to build this shining city on the hill.”

Mayberry was already recognized as a leader in mathematics education. She had received the Presidential Award for Excellence in Mathematics Teaching in 1993 and she was part of a cadre of math teachers from across the country assembled by Texas

Betty and Eddie Mayberry enjoy the Board of Trustees Dinner, which was in celebration of Mayberry’s and Phillips’ careers as educators and founding teachers at JPII.

Instruments who would teach other math teachers how to use the company’s graphing calculator in their classrooms.

As she was helping to open Pope Prep, Mayberry was also the incoming president of the Council of Presidential Awardees in Mathematics, a national organization, and president of the Tennessee Mathematics Teachers Association.

“As Betty likes to say, since the math department is always in the basement, it has to be the foundation of the school,” said Jennifer Dye in introducing her. “And it is.

“Betty invested not only in her students but in her colleagues as well,” said Dye, the director of innovation and entrepreneurship at Pope Prep. Like Mayberry and Phillips, Dye came to Pope Prep from Gallatin High and was the school’s first science department chair.

“She always encouraged me to push through any challenges in my way,” Dye said of Mayberry. “She has the knack to see the potential in others.

“She truly believes every student can be successful … even when the students didn’t believe it themselves,” Dye said. “She loved them as much as she loved math, and they loved her back.”

When Weber was a new headmaster at Pope Prep, he noticed that Mayberry was teaching four of the lowest level math classes, which often include students who lack confidence in their ability to learn math.

Former headmaster Faustin Weber shares his praises for Mayberry and Phillips during the Board of Trustees Dinner on May 6. Founding headmaster Hans Broekman introduces the Mike McLaren Financial Aid Fund to the Pope Prep community.

“It’s hard to teach students who aren’t confident,” he said. When he asked Mayberry why she took those classes, her response was “because I can have the most impact on those students.”

“I say this as the highest possible compliment,” Weber said. “THAT’S a teacher.”

The praise was just as effusive for Phillips.

“I realize now how lucky I was to hire her” as the school’s first academic dean, said Broekman, who traveled from England where he is now the principal of Liverpool College, a school for students ages 4-19. “Karen’s yes (to his job offer) created Pope John Paul II High School,” he said. “There’s no doubt about that.” “Through her presence, her kindness, her generosity of spirit,” Weber said, “she made this place special.” “Karen’s vision is woven into the soul of Pope John Paul II,” Andrew Griffith, the assistant head of school for academics, said of Phillips in his introduction of her.

“Karen’s vision of education was not simply about the head; her students knew she loved and cared about them deeply,” Griffith said. “For as passionate as our 2009 Advanced Placement National Teacher of the Year was about history or Youth in Government, her

students always knew that she cared more about them as people than their scores on a national exam. She believed that to educate students was to feed the head, the heart and the soul – and she gathered others that shared that vision.

“She modeled and lived the servant-leadership of Christ and in doing so she has touched generations of students and colleagues,” Griffith said.

Phillips took a 13-year break in her teaching career to raise her children. Soon after she returned to teaching in 1990 at Gallatin High, “it dawned on me … that I truly loved the way I spent my days,” Phillips said. “I enjoyed learning how to develop lessons that would engage students. I reveled in their enjoyment of working with the subject matter.

“But more than this, I loved getting to know them as individuals, having them surprise me with astute observations, seeing the ways that their concern for others guided collaborative group endeavors in the classroom, seeing them outside the classroom where they revealed their talents by performing on the athletic field, stage or debate chambers,” she added. “I loved developing a new community of learners each year … these students were my amazing, talented, ambitious, gritty, cheerful, appreciative, challenging community.

“In saying ‘yes’ to moving back into the classroom, I came to understand teaching as a ministry,” Phillips said, “a way of serving others with the talents and skills that I possessed.”

At the dinner honoring Phillips and Mayberry, which closed the school’s 20th year, the Board of Trustees also introduced the Mike McLaren Financial Aid Fund in honor of the school’s former dean of students who died in 2020 from injuries suffered in a motorcycle accident.

“One of the musketeers is missing,” Broekman said of McLaren, whom he brought with him to Pope Prep from Subiaco Academy in Arkansas in 2002 to help open the school.

“Anybody who was there at the beginning knows there will never, ever be another Mike McLaren,” Broekman said. “He was a force of nature, a friend, a genuinely good man.”

McLaren loved his students, Broekman said. “They were all his children.”

Alumnus Alex Abdo ‘12 visits with honoree Interim Head of School Karen Phillips.

The Mike McLaren Financial Aid Fund

“Mike McLaren was not only a teacher but a true educator. He strove to present to young people a vision of an examined life of abundance, without compromise, without surrender to the seductive siren calls of mediocrity and conformity. He saw in each kid something which they themselves could not yet see in themselves. Something beyond the problem and challenge of today, beyond their disappointment and pain. This is the incarnated spirituality of the true educator, the guide who will encourage, cajole, and occasionally force us to be better than we thought we could be.” – Hans Broekman, Founding JPII Headmaster

To support the gift of Catholic education in memory of Mike McLaren, please scan the QR code to visit our giving page on the Pope Prep website (https://www. popeprep.org/support-jpii/give-now). Choose “The Mike McLaren Financial Aid Fund” in the designation dropdown menu.

Advancing Our Mission

The Pope Prep community supports our mission in so many ways throughout each year. Whether members of our community contribute their time, talent, or treasure, we value these gifts as they support our current students and faculty and advance our mission. As a small token of gratitude, we highlight here some of the generous gifts from the 2021-22 year.

Memorial Foundation Grant Supports Christian Service Program

Since the school’s inception, service to others is at the core of the Pope Prep experience. All Pope students fulfill annual individual service hours as well as collective project-based community service experiences. It is in collaboration with annual Memorial Foundation support that the Pope Prep Christian Service program has flourished over the past 20 years providing in excess of 400,000 volunteer hours to Sumner and surrounding counties. The Memorial Foundation’s mission is to improve the quality of life for people through support to nonprofit organizations. The Memorial Foundation responds to diverse community needs, assisting agencies that focus on: Access to Quality Health Care Services, Human & Social Services, Education, Senior Citizen Enrichment Services, Youth and Childhood Development, Substance Abuse Programs, and Community Services. The Memorial Foundation partners with nonprofit organizations, such as Pope Prep, to collaborate in addressing the needs and improving the quality of life in our community. Throughout the 2021-22 school year, under the direction of Mr. Daniel Dion, Pope Prep Service Coordinator, students served at 75+ agencies generating 15,000+ volunteer hours in addition to helping throughout the community on four service retreat days. Fund For Excellence Shines Brightly

Each year the Pope Prep Advancement Office, in collaboration with the House Parents, hosts a schoolwide annual fund drive. This year the Be the Light annual fund campaign encouraged all families to participate by making a donation of any amount in order to “light” their family’s candle. Pope Prep families answered the call with 83% of all Pope Prep families participating in the school’s annual fund drive. Pope Prep is indeed the shining city on the hill. Thank you for your participation and a huge THANK YOU to our House Parents who assisted in making the fund drive a success!

FFE Be the Light Campaign Chairs Jim and Sarah McLeod

FFE House Chairs Clement (82%) ~ Mark and Valorie Quarles Gregory (88%) ~ Kevin and Nina Collins John (82%) ~ Clifton and Beva Darden & Cravens and Leslie Priest (pictured above) Leo (81%) ~ Lance and Mary Bentley & Dale and Gretchen Van Gorder Peter (83%) ~ Jeff and Peggy St. Peters Pius (82%) ~ Jamie and Rhonda Spurlock

Original Commissioned Painting Donated by Artist Bill Puryear

Bill Puryear is a Vanderbilt graduate and a veteran of the Korean War. He taught at Vanderbilt, Fisk, and University of Tennessee. He was founding Treasurer of Nashville Memorial Hospital and of Pope John Paul II High School. He serves as Chairman Emeritus of The Memorial Foundation. He retired in 2000 as Senior Partner of the CPA firm he founded in 1962 to devote full time to painting and writing. In honor of the school’s 20th anniversary, Puryear donated a commissioned original painting showcasing the beautiful Pope campus with our beloved Mike McLaren coaching soccer on the field below the school’s courtyard.

Prints ($100) and gclees ($1,000) are available for sale with proceeds benefiting the needs of Pope John Paul II Preparatory School and may be purchased here by scanning the QR code.

Project Graduation 2022 A great time was had by all at this year’s aftergraduation event which provided a festive atmosphere for the Class of 2022 to gather for their first Pope Prep alumni event. Our newest AlumKnights thank the following donors for making the event possible:

Greg and Mary Garretson (Benjamin ‘10, Samuel ‘16, Amanda ‘20) Chick-fil-A Gift Cards Hand In Hand Options Program Receives $125,00 KIND Foundation Grant

Knights of Columbus members from Council 9132 at Our Lady of the Lake Church in Hendersonville and Council 10010 at St. John Vianney Church in Gallatin donated $125,000 to the Hand In Hand Options Program through the KIND Foundation, which provides funding to meet the needs of those with intellectual disabilities. At a reception hosted by the school’s advancement office, Michelle Barber, Dean of Advancement, expressed appreciation for the good work of the Council members and the KIND Foundation saying, “Over the past 25 years these gentlemen have labored lovingly to fundraise for the benefit of those with intellectual disabilities. Today their generosity blesses our HIHO program with a substantially generous grant gift.” The school’s HIHO program launched in 2004 and has been recognized nationally for the caliber of the program, its faculty, and the amazing students it serves. “These funds provide us with a unique opportunity to take great ideas for program enhancements and expansions off the ‘wish list’ and put them on the ‘to-do’ list,” said Kim Shaver, the director of Hand In Hand Options at Pope Prep. “We are now able to entertain ideas that prior to receiving this grant were out of the realm of possibilities.”

Jerry and Sarah McNair (Reanna ‘18, Abigal ‘19, Aidan ‘22) McDonald’s Gift Cards

Natalie Beatty Parris ‘09 Main Street Pizza & Pub Gift Cards

Whit Brown ’07 Cash Grab Inflatable

Kate Barber ‘22 & Emily Leonard ‘22 Saint Pope John Paul II Tiny Saints