Erby Ends Mountain View Chapter

“Erbyland” at Mountain View High School is no more. Its queen and ruler is moving to not-so-distant lands but will forever remember the people who graced the “wall of fame” in her biology room and who shared her life over the past 26 years.

Lea Erby says she will find a place in her new home for the artwork, photos and senior announcements that she removed from her classroom.

“It was bittersweet,” she said of the packing experience. “My class was known as Erbyland for years.” Some girls bestowed the name on her markerboard, so she claimed the title of queen and ruled her “queenocracy.”

It was part of her wish to make her classroom a place that students did not dread entering.

“We had a good time,” she commented.
Lea will be moving to northwest Arkansas amid the conglomeration of towns that includes Rogers, where she considers “home.” Her family moved a lot in her younger years, but she attended grades 7-12 at Rogers, graduating in 1985.

Lea attended Hendrix College before transferring to University of Arkansas to ease the financial burden on her parents, who had two other children in college.
She had worked for a veterinarian in Pea Ridge while in high school and her early college years, and had the intent of pursuing a career in that field. However, her path changed after a friend needed a teacher for the Upward Bound math/science program at the same time Lea needed a summer job.

“I did Upward Bound math/science for two summers and that changed the direction of my career.”

She said she really enjoyed working with the kids during the summers of 1988 and 1989.

She received a bachelor’s degree in zoology and went on to obtain a teaching license.

Her first full-time job teaching was at West Side in Greers Ferry, where she taught life sciences for grades 7-12 for seven years. She was hired “last minute” and had only three days to prepare, but she had the advantage of being able to commute from her grandparents’ home in Tumbling Shoals.

“I would go home at night and my grandmother would have this dinner cooked, and then I would sit at the kitchen table and just try to make plans for the next day.”

Lea said she might not have held up through that stressful time if she hadn’t had the support of her grandparents.

By the next school year she was able to get a teaching contract on the normal schedule and find a house in the school district. She still has friends in Greers Ferry, and she now has friends in Mountain View who were her students at West Side.

Her penchant for lasting relationships continued. This past year, she received a Christmas Card from a student she had not seen in person since he graduated in 1993.

As one of her daughters put it: people may have entered Lea’s classroom as students but they left as her kids.

“I’ve already told this year’s 10th and 11th graders that once you’re in my room you’re my kid so I’ll be at your graduation and I’m going to expect to see you walking,” Lea said.

Read the full story in the June 19 issue.