Stephanie Moran helped lay the foundation for hundreds of students to earn their GED diplomas at the Durango Adult Education Center over the past 18 years.
As the high school equivalency program manager, Moran established formal classes to prepare students for tests, hired certified teachers and worked to introduce classes at La Plata County Jail.
Sue Petranek worked with Moran as a teacher at the education center for 11 years starting in 2002, and over the years watched the program give inmates at La Plata County Jail hope.
“It was a normalizing experience for people who were behind bars,” she said.
Now, after nearly a 40-year career in education, Moran will retire in May.
For years, Moran taught alongside her staff and created a collaborative work environment, which was important when dealing with the students’ irregular attendance, Petranek said.
“You have to be a very big-hearted and open-minded and flexible staff to deal with that,” Petranek said.
The center has close to a 100 percent pass rate among students in the high-school equivalency program, a level of excellence Moran attributes to the quality of teachers at the center.
She said she’s also worked hard to make sure the center creates a safe and welcoming environment.
“It takes a lot of courage for students to walk through our doors,” she said.
The center works to remove barriers, such as transportation or health care, for students. It has a staff member dedicated to this work – something Moran used to do herself.
To better serve her students, she also focused on slowing down. A fast-talking native of New Jersey, Moran realized it’s important to leave silence for students to speak up and to ask questions, especially if they haven’t had good classroom experiences.
She promises new students that the center’s staff members will do their best to earn the students’ trust, but they also have to commit to their education.
“What you learn here, you own forever. People can take many things from us. People can be taken from us. ... Nobody can take our education from us,” she said.
In 2016, Moran’s work was recognized when she was named the Colorado Adult Education Leader of the Year by the Colorado Adult Education Professional Association. Last year, she also received the Morley Ballantine Award from the Durango Chamber of Commerce for her leadership and support of women and girls in the community.
Before moving to Durango with her husband, Andrew Gulliford, and their sons, Duncan and Tristan, in 2000, Moran and Gulliford moved frequently.
Throughout her career, Moran taught at every educational level. After graduating from the University of Northern Colorado, her first teaching job was in Parachute, teaching elementary and middle school during the oil boom of the early 1980s, when new workers and their children were flooding in.
“I really got my teaching chops there,” she said.
After the industry crashed, she moved to Ohio and earned a master’s degree in English from Bowling Green State University. She went on to teach in New Mexico and Tennessee.
Along the way, Moran said she made mistakes because she didn’t have the benefit of modern diversity training.
As a high school English teacher in Silver City, New Mexico, 95 percent of her students were Hispanic.
“I made a whole lot of cultural faux pas day, after day, after day,” she said.
For example, she encouraged students to look at her when they spoke, not knowing that they were avoiding eye contact as a sign of respect. She realized her missteps after she learned some Spanish words and realized what they were saying about her wasn’t very complimentary.
Moran said she believes high school offers students “fullest compliment of an education,” but it doesn’t work for everyone.
The center offers all students who struggle with the traditional model greater flexibility and can fit them back into classes in a way credit-based models can’t. For example, when some students, particularly among Native American students, have a death or illness in the family, they might not return to class for a long time.
“I have a lot of empathy and a great deal of respect for our students,” she said.
In addition to working at the Adult Education Center, Moran has served on the Durango District 9-R School Board since 2012
Durango school board President Nancy Stubbs said Moran’s experience has helped board members understand when to be cautious and when to be bold in their decision-making.
“Her sincerity, her passion, her caring is inspiring to the rest of the board,” she said.
In her retirement, Moran plans to volunteer for hospice because she has a gift for supporting those who are dying, she said.
She also expects to spend a lot of time in southeast Utah and to learn how to spend the day playing again.
“I want to go back to when I was 4 years old and I could do nothing,” she said.
mshinn@durangoherald.com
