After teaching for the past 50 years, faculty and students gave a final goodbye to an Ector County Independent School District teacher.

Mrs. Jo Shedwin’s journey as a teacher started on August 29, 1966. In that period of time, the Permian Basin was marked with segregation and Shedwin taught history when blacks and whites attended separate schools.

“When the assignment came for me to go to Permian, I was thinking what I must do,” Shedwin said. “I went to the Texas A&M bookstore and I brought all kinds of books because I’m going to Permian High School.

“The first year she got to Permian High she was met with some resistance from some of the community, but not the students,” former Permian student Robyn Hernandez-Flores said. “She was proud. The fact that there was some people that didn’t want her to be there but the students loved and embraced her. She won teacher of the year that year.”

Mrs. Shedwin’s teaching career would span five decades. She spent 49 years as a Permian teacher and one year at Ector High School.

Shedwin, who was Permian’s first-ever African-American teacher, was known to say what she meant and mean what she said.

“She was very interesting as far as discipline in the classroom,” former Permian student Frosty Gilliam said. “She kept us on our toes.”

And now, some of Mrs. Shedwin’s former students have followed in her footsteps.

“Now that we’re adults and that we’re educators ourselves you can appreciate everything and all she put of herself to be an educator,” Hernandez-Flores said.

“That is rewarding to any teacher to see this child that I helped to mold become what he is or what she is today,” Shedwin said.