PORT GIBSON — A Port Gibson elementary school teacher is retiring after 63 years. The reason: her teaching license expires and she’d need to take state-required courses to renew it. Had her license not run out, Emma Brandon said she would keep going a few more years.

“Working with these young children from K-5, I don’t need to go back to school for that,” she said. “I have been experiencing that all my life.”

The 85-year-old said she never regretted her decision to become a teacher.

“I never had the feeling that I didn’t want to go to school this morning. I never got sick of it,” she said.

Much has changed since her early days of teaching in the 1940s. Brandon began teaching right out of high school at a two-room school in Port Gibson. Her room had 60 students — before air-conditioning. Brandon would walk three miles each way to school daily and was paid $36 a month. She received an extra dollar once she started driving and drove students to school —10 at a time in her 1946 Ford.

“When I first started, I wanted to work with country children,” said Brandon, who later went on to earn a bachelor’s and master’s degree from Alcorn State University. Brandon has spent her entire career in Claiborne County and has taught at A.W. Watson Elementary since 1967; the past 20 years have been as a resource teacher working with small groups of students who need extra help.

“I thought I was going to miss my regular school setting,” she said. “What I like about this class is I had to get adjusted. Even though the children couldn’t progress like the other children, that was all right. When they stayed with me a little while, they came up at least a grade letter.”

Fourth-grader Iesha Winslow, the daughter of Judy Clark, said her reading, writing and math skills have improved through working with Brandon.

“She helps us to read and write and she does it in a fun way,” she said. “If you write messy, she helps you write nice and neat.”

A.W. Watson Principal Curtis Ross said he’s amazed by Brandon’s sharpness, energy level and her ability to pinpoint specific areas where students need help.

“We rely on all kinds of assessments to look at student weaknesses, and just by working with a student, I’ve seen Mrs. Brandon say, ‘He needs work on his phonics or he needs fluency drills,’” he said.

In her years, Brandon has seen all kinds of changes. A big one is in the areas of discipline and desire.

“During the early days of my teaching if we told a child to be quiet and don’t talk in class, they would hear you,” she said. “You can tell the ones now don’t talk and they’re never going to stop.”

She thinks that might have something to do with children not having as much responsibility. “Used to when you went home, you didn’t loaf around,” Brandon said. “You came home, and they had a job for you.”