So Much Fun

When she arrived, she saw Nancy Lipscomb, the reading specialist who had also been summoned, with a similarly curious look on her face.

 

“I’m thinking, What have we done?” Bobbie recalled one morning recently. “Cliff was enjoying every minute of it.”

 

Their feeling of discomfort passed quickly when Miller informed them that they had earned a prestigious award presented by the Joint Council for Economic Education for a computer program entitled “Pocketful of Economics,” which was designed to teach elementary school students about economic terms.

 

“There were some games on the disk,” Bobbie said. “They [the Council] wanted to use it in other schools. Nancy and I had collaborated [on the project]. We won $400.”

 

Then she added, “Don’t even mention the award.”

 

That, friends, is Bobbie Lublin, Collegiate’s first Lower School tech guru, whose patience, unflappability, humility, grace, and far-ahead-of-her-time expertise played a significant and enduring role in guiding the campus into the computer age.

 

Bobbie’s career at Collegiate began in 1980 when she volunteered to work with students on the two Commodore computers that the School had acquired and placed in that inauspicious West Gym classroom well off the beaten path.

 

With this new, exotic resource available, teachers would send students three or four at a time to work with her. Ultimately, Apples replaced the old Commodores, more computers and other resources became available, and Bobbie found joy in expanding the program.

 

“God bless Collegiate,” she said. “We always had new equipment. If I wanted a camera or something else new to try, the School was always supportive. We had the best. If I wanted to go to a meeting or take a class, it was, Sure, go for it.”

 

That said, in a time before the Lower School renovation, she remained in her spartan quarters.

 

“I loved that room,” she said. “It was right next to (iconic science teacher) Burrell Stultz on one side, (physical education teachers) Bill Chambers and Rosemary Correll in the gym, and Jo Sullivan teaching reading next to me.

 

“The kids would come down, half a class at a time. I really didn’t want the kids sharing a computer because I found that one kid would take over, and I wanted everyone to feel responsible for what they were doing.”

 

A former high school math teacher whose children (Suzie Tiplitz ’85, Keith Lublin ’86, and Kathi Paul ’88) are Collegiate graduates, Bobbie served on the Parents’ Association board, assisted with the Book Fair and Middle School Time-Out, and generally pitched in, always in a low-key but effective manner, wherever needed.

 

“It was so much fun,” she said. “I tried to be where my kids were not. When everyone was out of the Lower School, that’s when I volunteered a lot over there.”

 

And that’s also when she began her stint as the resident computer expert.

 

“I’m a math person,” she said. “In college, if I could have gone into computers, I would have. It wasn’t a major I could get into.”

 

So she educated herself.

 

“I took a lot of computer language classes at VCU and Richmond to get myself up to speed,” she said. “We had Logo. We did word processing. I very soon decided that I didn’t like the programs that taught typing because it was memorizing where certain keys were. I taught them by the alphabet. They went at their own speed.

        

“They had a little card where they were able to close their eyes, go to the keyboard, find where the home keys were just by touch. Their friends would hold their hands over their eyes. They could type with the right fingers starting A-B-C-D all the way through the alphabet. These were second graders. By the end of the year, 100 percent of them could touch-type.”

 

Bobbie’s personal style, the hands-on nature of the instruction, and the novelty of technology resonated with the kids.

 

“They loved it right away,” she said.  “I had a sofa on the side of the room. I said, ‘If I ever tap you on your shoulder, it means you’re doing something you shouldn’t be doing. All I want you to do is go sit on the sofa and time yourself for five minutes.’ I don’t think I had but one or two students over all those years who ever had to sit on the sofa. They just came in and got right to task. It was fun for me, and I think it was fun for them.”

 

Teaching youngsters wasn’t Bobbie’s only responsibility.

 

She helped colleagues with projects including the Cougar Savings Club and myriad classroom activities. She constructed the database for Lower School report cards. She helped create booklets and playbills and anything that might involve graphics. She was something of a one-person, south-of-the-creek help desk.

 

She also taught adult classes, which was no small feat considering that many of those students, colleagues included, were learning a rapidly-evolving technology on the fly and were not totally sure they’d ever figure it out.

 

“I remember sitting in the computer lab in the back of the gym that opened onto the driveway,” said Blair Chewning, Bobbie’s long-time Lower School colleague. “We had a class after school for those of us who felt technologically challenged, which was basically most of us back in the day.

   

“(Head of School) Rob Hershey sat next to me. We had those gigantic box monitors, and Bobbie was as patient with us as she was with the second graders. She talked us through every step if we would do something wrong. I remember her saying, ‘Nothing you’ve done can’t be undone. It’s just like learning a foreign language. You’re going to get this.’ Nothing fazed her.”

 

In 1995, Patrick Loach, now the head of the Upper School, arrived as the institution’s first director of technology. In the summer of 1996, technicians wired the entire campus. That fall, computers were placed in every classroom, and everyone — student, faculty, and staff — was assigned an email address.

 

Bobbie was integral in providing support.

 

“She was teaching classes to students: keyboarding, word processing, exploring the relevant technologies of the time like HyperStudio and ClarisWorks,” Loach said. “She was also supporting teachers in their exploration of technology. It was a huge job.

 

“I come in, all of 24 years old, with big ideas. She never saw me as a threat. There was just excitement about what she could learn from me and what she could share with me. She was always ready and willing to experiment with a new technology. To me, she was a perfect partner.”

 

Bobbie, who retired in 1998, splits her time between Richmond and Naples, Florida.

 

She’s been involved for years with Artis-Naples. She plays pickleball three or four times a week, enjoys time with her children, their spouses, and her five grandchildren, and remains fascinated by technology.

 

As we talked in the Saunders Family Library that Monday morning following a get-together of former faculty and staff, she spoke of the joy she derived from demystifying technology and teaching skills that her students, young and old, would carry with them into the future.

 

“It was a fun time for me,” she said. “I’d hear people say about their jobs, ‘Oh, I have to go to work,’ and I thought, ‘Oh, man…’ This was fun every day.”

~Weldon Bradshaw