31 Jul 2024 South Side Bee Branch’s Diane Pavatt makes each student feel special 

Posted at 8:09 PMh in Features by

By KD Reep

There are people in this world who are universally beloved: Dolly Parton, Andy Griffith, Ray Charles. You can now count among them Diane Pavatt, retired second-grade teacher from South Side Bee Branch Elementary School. For 39 years, Pavatt taught three generations of students in the same school she attended as a girl. In May, she was recognized as the Distinguished Alumni of 2024 by the South Side Alumni Scholarship Board.

Diane Pavatt received the 2024 Distinguished Alumni Award from the South Side Bee Branch Alumni Scholarship Board. Family members surrounded her on the happy occasion. Her late husband was also recognized.

Pavatt attended a one-room school at Damascus before coming to South Side in seventh grade, where she played basketball and was active in Beta Club, Student Council, Yearbook Staff and Future Homemakers of America, according to Brenda Linn, who has been friends with her since they were students in high school. 

She is a former Miss South Side and was chosen Future Farmers of America Sweetheart. After she graduated in 1965, she earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in elementary and special education from the University of Central Arkansas in Conway. Before she retired, Pavatt was selected as an Outstanding Teacher in America.

“When my son was in her class, she told me, ‘Brenda, if you don’t believe everything your son tells you about school, I won’t believe everything he tells me about home.’ She’s as down-to-earth as anyone you could ever meet,” Linn said.

Pavatt said her mother was the first person to mention that she should become a teacher.

“She said, ‘Why don’t you become a teacher? They’re well-thought-of in the community.’ That didn’t register with me when I was young,” she said. “When I started college, there was grant money available for teachers in special education, and I applied for that and got it, so my education from then on was in special education and a double degree in elementary and special ed. It has been a wonderful career for me.”

During her four decades as an educator, she taught three generations of students, watching them grow up to become university students, business owners and have families of their own. She said it was an eye-opening experience and a fun one.

“My favorite part about teaching kids is they were lovable,” Pavatt said. “If you had to get onto them and they might be upset, they would do something to get on your good side. They would hide my reading glasses or my scissors. I finally made a long rope of yarn and tied my scissors on that and hung it around my neck so I could keep up with them.”

Bart Bradford was just one of the second-graders taught by Pavatt, and he said that even if you weren’t one of her students, you still felt like one. “She’s one of those people who never met a stranger,” he said. “She and her husband both are just wonderful people. She’s the type of teacher you can’t find anymore.”

“She is one of the finest ladies around,” said Skylar Bradford, his son. “You won’t find any better. I could call her right now, and she would drop what she’s doing and come help me.”

Pavatt said her favorite part of retirement is seeing a former student who remembers her and stops to tell her they had a good time in her class.

“I hope people remember me as being a good person, a kind person and one that made a difference in people,” she said. “I tried to do that with my students. It didn’t make any difference to me where they came from, what their backgrounds were. I tried to treat all of them the same, and I’d like to be remembered as a kind person that treated everybody the same.”