HANCOCK COUNTY — Nedra Herbert was walking down the hall of the elementary school in El Paso, Texas, where she was working as an attendance clerk in the 1990s, when she looked into a room and observed a speech pathologist at work.
She was drawn to the idea of making a difference in children’s lives by helping them communicate.
Herbert had gone to college straight out of high school, but not for speech pathology. Now she had a son in high school.
“I just thought, this is interesting,” she recalled of watching the speech pathologist. “I think I can do this.”
Herbert went on to do it for almost two decades for Mt. Vernon Community School Corporation. She retired at the end of the 2019-20 school year, capping off a career that proved to be just as fulfilling as she envisioned it would be all those years ago.
Herbert worked at Mt. Vernon for 18 years. She was an employee of the school corporation for about the past five years, and served it before that along with other schools in the area through a co-op.
After going through a divorce, she remained in El Paso until her son graduated from high school. Then she and her son moved back to her home state of Indiana. She took undergraduate and then master’s courses in speech pathology at Ball State University by day, and worked as a receptionist during the evenings.
At Mt. Vernon, Herbert worked mostly with students at the Mini-Marauder Preschool, but has had older students in her caseload throughout her career as well. She taught them how to communicate thoughts, identify and label things and helped them overcome challenges that prevented them from being able to say certain sounds properly. Herbert worked with children on the autism spectrum; students who are nonverbal due to health issues; and students with cognitive impairments.
“Communication is a big part in a child’s development, and it affects them their whole life,” she said. “If a child’s not able to communicate what they know, their feelings, that’s going to affect them the rest of their lives.”
Over the years, Herbert watched the approach of her profession shift from pulling students out of class and working with them one on one to a model that calls for working with groups of students. She also kept up with regularly changing procedures, particularly when it came to evaluation and reporting.
For those considering a career in speech pathology, she offered the following advice: be flexible and be ready to adapt to change.
Laura Durig, director of special education for Mt. Vernon, called Herbert’s dedication and commitment to student success exemplary.
“Mrs. Herbert’s knowledge and instructional practices enabled our youngest learners to grow in their ability to clearly communicate their thoughts, understand and use language, and develop early literacy skills,” Durig told the Daily Reporter in an email. “We hope Mrs. Herbert realizes how much she will be missed by the Mt. Vernon community.”
As Herbert starts her retirement, she said she’s looking forward to getting involved more with her church, crafting, cross-stitching, traveling and spending more time with her grandchildren.
She said she’ll miss working with children and her colleagues, but added with a laugh she won’t miss the paperwork so much.
When she wants to look back on her time in education, she’ll be able to pull out the Christmas cards her students gave her that she’s kept throughout her career.
“I don’t know if I’ll ever throw them away,” she said.
