GOOD NEWS: ECISD teacher retires after 50 years of service

The Ector County Independent School District Board of Trustees honored retiring teacher Jo Shedwin for her 50 years of service to ECISD and the community at the Dec. 13 school board meeting.
Shedwin graduated from Prairie View A&M University in 1966 and was hired in Odessa that same year.
When she came to Odessa in August of that year she never suspected she would have taught Ector County students all of the social studies that are offered in the Odessa public school curriculum 50 years later.
Shedwin is a product of the agrarian segregated south having grown up in the east central rural community of Tennessee Colony, Texas, which is located 90 miles south of Dallas: 100 miles east of Waco: 47 miles west of Tyler and 14 miles north of Palestine.
She was born first of four children to a World War II soldier and a school teacher. Her parents taught her and her three brothers, “Just because you are treated as a second class citizen, you don’t have to act like one.”
Her parents instilled to her and her brothers to learn all that you can from the books that were out of adoption and had been passed down from the white school, study the books with the torn-out pages and study hard with dignity because there is no substitute for getting an education.
In 1966, at age 21, Shedwin began teaching students United States History at Ector High School. The following year, she continued her teaching career at Permian High School where she served as a sponsor of the junior board, voted most favorite teacher, selected several times Who’s Who among High School Teacher and was appointed social studies department chair.
Outside of the classroom, she is an active member of the Mount Olive Baptist Church. Her work in Christian lay ministry has extended from local, district, state, national levels to the Baptist World Alliance in Seoul, South Korea and Hara, Zimbabwe in South Africa.
Shedwin has been widowed since 2002; she is the mother of one son and two grandsons and she is the stepmother of four children.