While sitting on the back of a cruise in Halifax, Nova Scotia, getting ready for dinner, longtime Southport Middle School teacher Don Manning received a phone call from SHS Principal, Amy Boone.
After that brief call with Boone, feeling nervous yet excited, Manning told his wife and the other 20 people from his cruise that he is SHS’s new marketing and entrepreneurship educator.
Some, like Manning, can argue that having to pack almost the entirety of one’s career into a box and moving it all into another building can cause drastic change within life.
“I had been in the same place the last 23 years and making a change two weeks before school was a little crazy,” Manning said.
Since their freshman year of high school, right here at SHS, the two have been inseparable.
Anne was a very bubbly and social student. However, nobody could get a word out of Manning. He was a rather quiet student who stayed to himself.
That was until their algebra teacher scolded Anne for talking, and sent her to sit beside Manning in hopes that she would no longer disrupt the class.
Yet, somehow, despite his introverted personality, Anne was the only person who could get him to talk to her.
“I got him to talk to me and even marry me,” Anne said.
That, right there, was the start of the Mannings’ future at SHS.
Manning went to Indiana University to study business and graduated with a degree under it. He then later got another degree in education from IU.
As his first job, he worked for the Property and Management and Metropolitan Development as a property manager for roughly five years.
From there Manning spent most of his career working at Southport Middle, where he was a language arts and social studies teacher. Now, he teaches an older audience of high school students marketing and entrepreneurship.
Although when his wife got into teaching, being around that atmosphere made him miss the teaching environment. This made him realise that he wanted to instruct as well.
“It kind of made me want to go back and go ahead and do teaching,” Manning said.
Manning grew up around the high school since his mother was an aid there. He spent most of his hours after school and around the learning environment. So this wasn’t new to him at all.
He always kept being a teacher in the back of his mind, but to make a little more money, took up a career in business instead.
But every waking August, at the start of every new school year, all Manning wanted was to be a part of the back to school craze.
And eventually, he finally made the switch.
“I wish I would’ve always done teaching,” Manning said.
Many people assume this is him and Anne’s first time working together in the same building, but really they’ve worked alongside each other for over 20 years in the past.
The Mannings both worked at Southport 6th Grade Academy, where Manning taught in team Noble and Anne taught in team Excellence, while both teaching language arts and social studies.
But as of last year, Anne came to SHS to become an English teacher, and she teaches sophomores and seniors.
“I absolutely fell in love with Southport High School,” Anne said.
Getting the chance to experience a new learning opportunity from her coworkers and administrators was one of the main factors that led her here.
After falling in love with her first year at SHS and seeing a new job opportunity for Manning, she knew he had to be the one to take it.
Luckily she was right to push him towards that decision, as her husband loves what he does at the high school.
This new work opportunity for Manning allows him to challenge himself with a more mature audience.
“It’s been challenging for me, which is good,” Manning said. “It’s made me kind of learn new things again, and just push me to do more than I was.”
Surprisingly enough, even with years of marriage uniting them, the Mannings rarely ever come in contact with each other while at work.
Regardless of how close their classrooms are to each other, neither one of them has stepped foot into the other’s room.
Expanding students’ intelligence overrides being in each other’s presence, and maintaining a professional look is their biggest priority.
“The students are more important at that point,” Anne said.
Coming back from where it started, from meeting at the age of 15 at SHS to teaching here in their 50s, some could say the Mannings are the original Cardinals of SHS.
“We’re back here together where it all started,” Anne said.
