The Tuolumne County resident has visited many of the places described in her class’s textbooks, then brought the real-world cultural lessons back to the students.
“It makes you so much less egocentric,” Terry said. “You realize you’re part of a bigger world, and it’s not all about your little corner of the world. There are people in a whole different situation than yours.”
The 63-year-old has a talent for describing places and people. On a daily basis, she transports her listeners to the ancient city of Troy, the Coliseum in Rome, markets in Istanbul, and many of her other recent destinations.
“Usually, when she has gone somewhere she comes back and we hear the stories,” said Sandy Cardoza, an office assistant at the tight-knit Pinecrest School. “She makes you feel like you’re there. … She was talking about the crispness of someone’s dialect, and it was like you could hear them.”
Terry recently took her globetrotting a step further and became a humanitarian. Last summer she visited Greece and Turkey, where she made friends with an engineering student, Sinan Borak.
Terry said Borak, like many of the other locals she met, knew thousands of years of Turkish history like the palm of his hand. He went sightseeing with Terry and told her about his life.
By the time the Oct. 23 earthquake happened in Turkey, Terry was back in the U.S., but she still communicated with Borak via email, helping him learn English. When she heard that many of his family members were now homeless due to the earthquake, she decided to help.
Terry said she collected supplies like clothing, tents and portable heaters, then sent them to Turkey. She returned to Istanbul, where she met some of Borak’s extended family and helped them get settled into an apartment.
Terry also said that the Borak family’s plight affected her profoundly, leaving her unable to sleep without thinking about them sleeping in the street.
“(Terry) has such a passion for humanity,” Cardoza said. “She just gets to know people and their stories and what they’re about. When she travels, it’s like she has a little family wherever she goes.”
At Pinecrest School, which is about 30 miles from Sonora, Terry’s cozy classroom has a forest view. Posters about ancient civilizations hang on one wall, next to a shelf crammed with books and binders. Material for science lessons, including a stuffed owl specimen, top one shelf.
The room resembles a combined museum, laboratory and library, all tucked into a mountain cabin.
There, Terry’s small class of sixth- through eighth-grade students hear what it’s like to walk through the open-air market in Turkey or stand in the Hagia Sophia mosque.
Terry has a well-worn copy of Homer’s “Iliad,” retold for young readers, that she reads to the class every day. She pauses to add firsthand detail from her visit to Troy.
On her trip to Turkey and Greece last summer, two students and one parent accompanied Terry and her daughter. One of the students is now a freshman at Summerville High. The other, Will Kirk, is in eighth-grade at Pinecrest and often describes his experiences for the other students.
“The biggest thing I learned there was about the diversity of cultures,” Kirk said. “I thought that so many things were true here, but when I went there to those countries, I found out that most of the things I was told to believe were wrong.”
During the 18 days of the trip, Kirk went inside a replica of the Trojan horse, saw the Temple of Zeus, and visited sites of many of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.
“We went to every single famous place that we study about,” Terry said. Her face lights up when she starts describing the trip. “You just can’t believe that you’re really standing in those places. I thought, ‘I am standing in the church at Constantinople, for goodness sake!’”
Terry grew up in Mobile, Ala., far away from cities built by emperors. She spent much of her childhood traveling around the U.S. with her family.
“That was my first introduction to how wonderful it is to travel,” she said.
She later attended college in California, first intending to become a pharmacist but switching to education. She made the change when a career counselor advised her to pursue what brought her joy. (“It was so meant to be,” she said. “It was so me.”)
But it was a trip to Yosemite during her junior year of college that set Terry on the path to globetrotting.
While visiting the park with a friend, she heard a pair of boys around her age speaking with British accents. She said she imitated the accent, which amused the boys and started a conversation. The Brits told her how they’d been traveling across the U.S. by themselves on their tight budget.
“My girlfriend and I looked at each other and said, ‘We’re going to do this next year,’” Terry remembered. “We stayed up all night and planned how we were going to save money and travel around Europe.”
The two continued “plotting” for a semester, Terry said. They spent six weeks touring Europe, camping and cooking for themselves to save money.
Terry said she would recommend the same approach for anyone who would like to travel but thinks they can’t afford it.
“You can make it as expensive or inexpensive as you want it to be,” she said. She added that hostels are now an affordable alternative to camping.
Since college, Terry has traveled extensively in the U.S., Europe, and the Middle East. She is retiring from her position at Pinecrest at the end of this academic year and plans to spend more time traveling than ever before. She also wants to teach English classes abroad.
Terry’s list of places to go includes Egypt, Kenya, India, China, Tibet and Rio de Janeiro, where she wants to see Carnival next February. She’s also working on checking off UNESCO World Heritage sites.
She typically doesn’t use guided tours, instead taking the opportunity to meet locals and hear their stories.
“I never miss the opportunity to make another little family connection,” Terry said. “It brings such joy to me to be able to hear about their world and maybe be a part of it. They can make me part of their culture.”
Contact Brenna Swift at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it or 588-4547.
