Deb Hitchcock remembers that in 1982 "I got my foot in the door" by becoming a para-professional at South Barber USD 255 in Kiowa for one year. That's after she graduated from NWOSU that year with a degree in health, physical education, recreation and dance.

Forty years later, she is retiring from South Barber where she's taught physical education. Immediately following her college graduation, Hitchcock got a call saying that teachers Maxine Nelson and Charleen Brintnal needed paras. She "team taught" with longtime elementary teacher Max McGee fourth- and fifth-grade physical education. Plus s...