[Written November 2018.]
In the backroom of The Creative Teacher, Deb Jones cradles a phone between her cheek and shoulder. An apple-shaped red granite paperweight sits on her desk. It has ‘OMNI DEB’ painted on it. It was a gift from employees who recognize her as a local titan in the world of classroom supply merchandising.
As a customer describes an item they hope exists, Deb is already whispering a product number and reaching for one of 20 filing cabinet drawers. Before the customer finishes speaking, she has the exact item’s picture under her finger in a supplier’s catalog. No one has ever been better at this than Deb. Perhaps no one ever will be.
Ask about her favorite product, and Deb doesn’t hesitate. “Mavalus Tape,” she says. “M A V one zero zero one. One-inch Mav tape. It won’t leave marks on walls when teachers hang things up. I like sticky clips, too. Most teachers can’t use nails or anything that could damage paint in their classrooms.”
You can tell Deb enjoys storing and fetching this vast catalog of information in her head. “I really like it when the new products come out, usually in January,” she says.
A proud lefty, Deb also describes herself as left-brained – organized, meticulous, and “scarcely creative.” Yet while the store reflects her orderly nature in its pragmatic layout, it brims with imaginative touches.
Each Creative Teacher gift certificate is hand-colored to ensure it’s unique and authentic. Orders ship worldwide, packed in reused supplier boxes with items often wrapped in past issues of the Kearney Hub. Every shipment includes a signed thank-you note and a handful of candy or sheet of stickers, whether it’s headed to an elementary school across town or an orphanage in South America.
Step inside the store. You find treasures. A a box of scented markers that smell like a bouquet of atomic fruit, each uncapped marker a chemical, over-sweet experience better described by its color (red) than its supposed fruit flavor (cherry). There are BOYS and GIRLS bathroom passes that will someday warp and fade from countless hands and disinfectant wipes. There’s a teacher’s hand bell that, when rung – and customers do ring it – makes your chest tighten with memories of recess’s end.
The shelves overflow with classroom essentials: festive pencils and pencil grippers, pink gummy erasers, a rainbow wall of glittery stickers, workbooks, and cliche motivational posters (Deb’s favorite features Garfield the cat with a hoard of clones behind him, declaring “Math Multiplies Your Chances for Success”). You’ll find puzzles, chalk, vanilla-colored cursive practice paper with its generously spaced blue and red lines. Flashcards, rulers, bags of pots and crafting supplies that kindergartners will transform into necklaces and fridge art. Everything here has the potential to shape and expand young minds.
“We ordered owl pellets a couple times,” Deb says, “for science experiments. Students can figure out habitats and what owls eat from analyzing those. We used to order tornado tubes too – little plastic connectors for pop bottles to show what tornadoes look like.”
Unlike the convenient but bland shopping experience of modern big-box retailers, The Creative Teacher offers something rarer: charm.
Through wholesaler, The Creative Teacher has offered online ordering since 1999 (when Google was just a year old), it never adopted other modern retail technologies. Receipts are still handwritten, with customers receiving yellow carbon copies. Thousands of records fill cabinets and cardboard bank boxes in chronological order. Inventory counts happen on paper. A typewriter – yes, a typewriter – clicks out mailing labels. In a store with more than 10,000 products, barcodes are meaningless. These old-school processes would make any business consultant spontaneously combust. There are processes at play here that would make a business consultant combust into flame.
When The Creative Teacher closes on December 31, it will end its run as one of Downtown Kearney’s longest-standing stores. The reasons are familiar to many small businesses. Pressure from online retailers, rising overhead costs, shrinking product margins, debt risen just below the nostrils.
The store opened in 1987. Deb joined as an employee in 1988 and became the owner in 2003. When asked how it feels to be a longtime entrepreneur, she deflects the title, watches it wriggle on the floor while she searches for a better description. “I’d call myself a business owner,” she says. “It turned into my hobby. I’ve tried to be helpful to people rather than make money. I know that’s what businesses are supposed to do, but I’m also a full-time teacher and that’s about helping people.”
Deb hasn’t drawn a salary since the ’90s. There was never talk of expansion. Every penny earned went back into the store. And that’s exactly how Deb wanted it. This business was never about business.
The Creative Teacher is deeply personal for everyone who works or regularly shops there. While it serves the expected clientele – teachers, daycare providers, and tutors – it’s also become a resource for senior centers, homeschoolers, churches, and parents helping kids with homework at the kitchen table.
“There are customers that aren’t necessarily teachers,” Deb says. “Once, a lady came in because she noticed the neighbor girl across the street was struggling, so she bought some stuff to help tutor her. But I’d say the most memorable people are teachers who’ve been longtime customers. There’s a teacher at Axtell who’s shopped here for a long, long, time. And even though personnel changes, the same schools keep ordering from us.”
As central Nebraska’s only classroom supply store, The Creative Teacher was also a curious little community.
While closing will be difficult, Deb says it won’t compare to the hardship that blindsided the store last year when an employee died unexpectedly. “That was the first thing that started majorly changing things,” Deb says. “You could never replace someone like Katherine.”
Katherine Shield was a retired elementary teacher who, like Deb, treated The Creative Teacher as more hobby than job. “We always called her ‘Mother Katherine.’ She genuinely cared about people and wanted to help them. The teacher part of her showed through.”
The store now employs three people. Aileen Blank, a retired teacher who now substitutes at Wilcox-Hildreth, has worked summers at The Creative Teacher since 1997. “We always had a good time with Katherine,” she says. “Somebody was always laughing. It’s such a happy place.” Aileen was a customer for years before becoming an employee. “It’s so nice to help other teachers with their ideas, finding products. Being able to see products before buying them is especially helpful with books. It’s a wonderful store. I think a lot of people are gonna miss it.”
Terri Berry, the store’s manager and only full-time employee, joined shortly after Katherine’s passing. “I love scrapbooking, so I had been in before I started here,” she says. She quickly found her place in the community. “When I missed work, customers would stop in just to see if I was okay. It’s so personal. It’s like a big family.” That family was still growing, even after 31 years in business. “There are still people who walk by and are excited to find the store for the first time.”
The third employee, Deb, is considered part-time since she’s also been teaching full-time for 40 years. She has spent the last 30 years at Sumner-Eddyville-Miller School, where she is just as omnipresent. Beyond teaching math, she leads the Quiz Bowl team, manages concessions for sporting events, sponsors senior classes, oversees graduation each May, and coordinates the High Ability Learning program. Residents at local senior living centers know Deb well, along with S-E-M’s National Honor Society and student council groups. “We visit our care home buddies five times a year,” she says. “They’re all people from Sumner, Eddyville, Miller, Oconto… They like meeting the kids because they know their parents and grandparents.”
If she wasn’t a math teacher, she says she’d probably be an accountant. She finds joy in tedious tasks that I find nearly lethal. She honors speed limits as if they were scripture. She cares about rulesd processes with an intensity that makes my ears hot. Out of 10,000-plus items, she chose a roll of white, hyper-practical tape as her favorite product.
Instead of talking about the store closing, Deb often shifts conversation to praise Katherine, Terri, and Aileen, along with Gaylan, Joyce, Sharon, Jennifer, Janet, Trudy, and others. Former owners or employees she still talks to regularly. “We’ve become good friends,” Deb says. “We go out and celebrate birthdays. That kind of thing. We all have the same thing in common. We all want to support teachers and improve kids’s lives and make them the best they can be.”
Photos of these people hang in the backroom at The Creative Teacher. There are also photos of me. Deb is my mom. And I’m now old enough o understand that she is humble, thoughtful, and incomparably kind. Growing up on a farm instilled in her a work ethic that eclipses that of almost anyone I’ve met. She holds tight to the people and routines she loves, and she’s the first to act when she sees a chance to make someone happier. She is the good stuff I find at my core as I shed years of hasty assumptions.
It’s a family joke that mom’s presents are so thoroughly wrapped in packing tape that they’re probably waterproof. Opening them requires a knife with a serious blade. Each gift is like a care package, a big reused supplier box stuffed with treasures. It’s a habit born from years of packing orders at The Creative Teacher, and thankfully, it won’t disappear when the store does.
I rarely shop where I am. That is, I default to online shopping and mega-stores I don’t care about. But when I visit a small, local business, it reminds me of mom. It might sound sentimental, but there are people pouring their whole beings into small businesses like The Creative Teacher. They make communities special.
“I don’t regret anything,” Deb says. “I’ve enjoyed every minute of it. I’ve put my heart and soul into it.”
Among a modest empire of pegboard walls and manila folders, Omni Deb will complete The Creative Teacher’s final sale on December 31. Until then, you can visit to shop for clearance inventory, fixtures, equipment, even a commercial laminator. Deb will be there Thursday evenings and all day Saturdays.
If you have a memory of the store, I’m sure mom would love it if you shared it in person or on paper. The Creative Teacher [was] at 2027 Central Avenue in Kearney, NE 68847.
***
Deb also thanked to Gaylan and Joyce Abood and John and Janet Koperski for opening The Creative Teacher and giving her the opportunity to own and manage it. It became a hobby she will greatly miss, but is grateful for having enjoyed. She also appreciates the help and support of family and friends that kept the store humming along for so many years. Here are more people she wanted to thank and praise: Nancy Probasco, Kyla Martin, Dawn Standage, Lori Glenn, Suzanne Young, Cheryl Hendrickson, Kerri Ann Sis, Trudy Flaherty, Jennifer Behlman, Sharon Valcek, Nancy Lenz, and longtime contacts at Kearney Public Schools, Elkhorn Public Schools, and essentially all teachers within 200 miles of 2207 Central Avenue in Kearney, Nebraska.
A short version of this appeared as a column in the Kearney Hub and the Grand Island Independent.
