Diane Robinson, a teacher known for her ability to bring Alabama history to life and her compassionate spirit, will retire after 43 years at Athens Bible School.

Born into a family of educators, the Rogersville native said that she decided to become a teacher because she “enjoyed being around children and watching them grow and learn.” Robinson graduated from the University of North Alabama in the spring of 1974 and started teaching fourth graders at ABS a few months later.

She has taught the same grade her entire career and is known as an instructor who teaches things that cannot be learned from a textbook.

The school’s assistant director of development, Gayle Hagewood, was one of Robinson’s first fourth grade students. Robinson also taught all four of Hagewood’s children.

She remembers Ms. Robinson’s field trips best.

“She had this ability to take us back in time at sites like Helen Keller’s birthplace at Ivy Green and Cathedral Caverns,” Hagewood said. “She worked science and history into the trips, and we hardly knew it because she made it so real.”

Now as one of Robinson’s coworkers, Hagewood gets to see a different side of Robinson, the practical joker who Hagewood describes as having “a very pretty smile and sweet laugh” and the ability to “to teach compassion to her students.”

For Robinson, teaching the hundreds of students who have passed through her classroom over the years how to be compassionate and caring has been one of her greatest accomplishments.

Fighting back tears, Robinson tells how when her mother died in 1992, every one of her students came to the funeral. When she had cancer, her students made and sent cards to her, and when she came back after the surgery, her students insisted on doing just about everything for her.

“The love and respect that I have seen my students show to one another and their elders over the years makes me proud to have been their teacher,” she said.

When Robinson first started teaching, she taught all the core subjects, including the Bible. Of the many stories she shared with her students, the Old Testament account of David and Goliath was her favorite.

“Goliath was so large, and Davis was so little, but he had God with him so he was able to defeat him,” Robinson would explain to her students. “As long as you have God with you, you can can do great things.”

Robinson doesn’t intend on slowing down once she retires. She wants to spend more time with her great-nieces and -nephews and plans on taking up quilting if her arthritic hands will cooperate. After 43 years of waking up at dawn, she’s also looking forward to sleeping in.

Meanwhile, her absence will be felt at the school.

“We are going to miss her terribly,” Hagewood said. “She teaches her students to think about others, and we love that about her.”

“Ms. Robinson is leaving us with some very big shoes to fill,” she said.

ABS will host a retirement tea for Robinson to celebrate her years of service from 1:30-3:30 p.m. Dec. 3 in the school’s dining hall. The community is invited to attend.