Teacher for life

“I never really had any other goals than just being a teacher when I grew up.” 

— Charlotte Throgmorton, Ephrata High School assistant principal 

EPHRATA — An era will end this year at Ephrata schools, as Charlotte Throgmorton retires. 

Throgmorton, who is finishing her career as the assistant principal at Ephrata High School, has been with the Ephrata School District for 38 years, her entire teaching career. 

“Charlotte’s impact on this district is immeasurable,” Superintendent Ken Murray wrote when announcing Throgmorton’s retirement. “She has led with dedication, integrity and a relentless focus on student achievement. Her influence can be seen in the programs she built, the lives she changed and the educators she mentored along the way.” 

Throgmorton discovered her love for teaching when she was in middle school, she said. 

“I was captured by my teachers in seventh grade,” she said. “I enjoyed seventh grade and thought that was what I wanted to be. I never really had any other goals than just being a teacher when I grew up.” 

A graduate of Moses Lake High School, Throgmorton went to Big Bend Community College and then to Central Washington University, where she graduated in 1986. After paying some dues as a substitute teacher, she interviewed with the Ephrata School District the next year and found her forever home. 

“I taught 16 years of (sixth through eighth) grade,” Throgmorton said. “I just seemed to feel like I understood the middle school mentality … I felt very confident and very successful with middle school kids, and the area I was teaching was math, and it was just perfect for me. I got to teach some of the kids who were struggling in math, and then I got to teach the algebra class too. I really loved helping kids who needed a different way to do math and be successful.” 

Throgmorton had played volleyball during her years at Central, so she was a natural to coach Ephrata’s varsity volleyball team, leading them to state three times. 

Throgmorton had gone back to CWU over a couple of summers and gotten her master’s in administration, so when the district needed her in that capacity, she was prepared. Moving to administration wasn’t an easy decision, she said, especially because it meant giving up coaching, but she felt she could have a longer reach that way. 

“It was a way for me to reach the kids through teaching the teachers,” she said. “When I was in admin, if I could spread what I know and how I know how to do things to the teachers, then they can follow that through to the kids.” 

She worked on standardized testing for the various schools in the district and also took on a special project, she said. 

“I was asked by the superintendent to look at alternative schools in our state,” she said. “He had gathered all this information and just put it on my desk. That was fun, and I look back on it that way, (but) at the time it was very stressful.” 

The following year Sage Hills Alternative School opened up, with Throgmorton on staff. Eventually she became the principal there and left around 2014, she said. In 2018, Sage Hills was closed and the program moved to the Ephrata High School campus. Throgmorton worked in the federal programs office for a while and then found her place at Ephrata High School. There she can be found standing outside her office between classes, offering a friendly wave and smile to passing students. 

During her time at the district office, she said, Throgmorton started an interscholastic athletic program at the middle school, something it hadn’t had before. 

“I was working on that for the first two years,” she said. “I'm the one who bought all the uniforms, (set up) all the schedules, just kickstarted it, basically. I think it was a big accomplishment, because if you look at our middle school sports now, it's such a great part of the middle school. … When kids are in sports, or if they're in different activities, they seem to rise above with their behaviors and do well.” 

In addition to her duties as assistant principal, Throgmorton was also the director for three years of the Early Childhood Education and Assistance Program, or ECEAP, and helped establish Tiger Cubs Preschool. 

“She was a great mentor,” said Michelle Willis, who was the site coordinator at the preschool while Throgmorton was director. “She’s very easy to listen to, talk to. You ask her ‘Hey, Charlotte, I need your help,’ and she'd say, ‘All right, what do I do?’ And she'd get it done and get it done quick.” 

When her retirement begins at the end of this school year, Throgmorton said, she’s looking forward to having time to visit her two sons, who live in Ohio and Maryland. 

“Before I had a little window in July that I had to try to do that,” she said. “And now my calendar is wide open.” 

After so many years in the district, Throgmorton has worn a lot of hats and taught multiple generations of children, including some of the teachers she works with now. She frequently runs into her success stories around town, she said. 

“Boys that were in my classes when they were younger … they come up and give me a hug and ask me how I am and how's it going and are you still doing that?” she said. “So sometimes the reward doesn't come right away, but it does eventually.”