Nearly 40 years ago, the Friday before the 1981-82 school year started, Vince McCann landed his first full-time teaching job.
He retired from that same job, teaching business at Brown County High School, at the end of December.
His classroom walls were a scrapbook of his time in the school and a glimpse into his personality: High school teams he coached in the ‘80s and ‘90s. A John Denver album cover. Inspirational quotes about effort and practice and dedication.
As a young teacher, McCann had applied to every school within a 50-mile radius of him. He’d received his bachelor’s degree in business education from Marian University in Indianapolis. His first job out of college was teaching for half a school year at South Dearborn High School, filling in for a maternity leave.
[sc:text-divider text-divider-title=”Story continues below gallery” ]He then began earning his master’s degree in business education through Xavier University while running a painting business and looking for teaching jobs. He had started the painting business in college, working during the summers and over holiday breaks.
Finally, McCann found himself interviewing for a teaching job in Brown County — a county he had only driven through once before on his way to an Indiana University basketball game. But the county’s hills and creeks reminded him of his hometown, New Alsace. It wasn’t long before McCann began to plant his roots here.
Eventually he had three children — Mary Kate, Kathleen and Aaron — who all attended Brown County High School. Aaron is currently a senior.
All his children played more than one sport while in high school, which is something McCann firmly believed in. “I like keeping them in sports. Sports are great,” he said.
“Luckily, they’ve been good enough to stick in it. That’s made life better for them, I think.”
McCann earned his master’s in business education from IU. Initially, he’d wanted to be a teacher because he wanted to coach basketball. He decided on teaching business because he enjoyed learning accounting and finance in college. “I like where everything has its place, like putting together a puzzle,” he said of accounting.
He also owned a business, which gave him personal experience with being an entrepreneur.
McCann coached basketball and cross country in Brown County Schools for about 15 years. He started the first girls cross-country team at the high school, which he coached for about 10 years.
While he was earning his master’s degree, McCann quit coaching so he could focus on his education, but he eventually came back to coaching basketball.
When his children were young, McCann officially stopped coaching. “I just wanted to be with them, spend time with them. Then, I never got back into it,” he said.
His teaching career has been filled with many other school firsts. He started the personal finance and entrepreneurship classes at the high school. After receiving his vocational teaching license in 2002, he began the Interdisciplinary Cooperative Education and mentoring programs at the high school.
In those programs, McCann worked to pair students with local businesses in the community in a field they were interested in pursuing, like working in an optometrist’s office or at CVS in the pharmacy.
“It was fun because I could get out of school and meet these people, set them up and get kids in there, let them experience what it’s like, and then move them around to different places if they have more than one career choice,” he said of the ICE program.
That experience helped McCann continue as a business teacher for almost four decades even after he quit coaching. He also truly enjoyed teaching various aspects of business, like accounting and business law.
The decision came to retire when McCann’s wife, Marci, decided she, too, wanted to be a entrepreneur. She earned her massage therapist license and wanted to open a business in Trafalgar. McCann said he wanted to help her cover the startup costs by using some of his retirement money.
“She’s been working for the people. She just ain’t that type. She likes to run the show,” he said.
In his retirement, McCann said he plans to help assist his wife in her business accounting. And if that doesn’t keep him busy enough, he said he also enjoys The Apple Works orchard in Trafalgar, so if he ever wants a part-time job, he’s going to start looking there first.
He also plans to help coach the high school baseball team with Randy Minniear this spring. Next season, McCann will have the opportunity to coach his son, Aaron.
“I’ll probably just do it for a year until Aaron graduates. We’ll see how it goes. Now that I have free time, I might just get back to coaching basketball. I don’t know yet,” he said.
“I’m just going to play it by ear.”
Here to help
After 40 years of teaching, McCann said he’s ready for something different. But he will miss his students.
“I love seeing them at the reunions, if I make a reunion. It’s so neat to see them and how they’re doing, but mostly just all of the great kids you get in the room and you just get to know them,” he said.
“It’s a great school. It really is. My kids came through here. I see how they’ve done and what the teachers have done for them. It’s like church: You get out what you put into it. There’s some things we don’t have that big schools have, but you can go through here and get what you need to go on and be very successful. We have great teachers here.”
Some of his former students are now business owners in the community, including Ryan Seward, who owns Brozinni Pizzeria, and the late Gregg Watson, who opened the Family Fun Center years ago as a safe place for teens to hang out.
Watson took McCann’s accounting class. “I was very proud of him for starting that business,” McCann said. After Watson was no longer a student, he continued to help McCann with his entrepreneurship class.
“Then, of course, tragedy hit. I think that was the only time I ever cried in my class. That hit me hard. He was great,” McCann said of Watson’s sudden passing 14 years ago.
McCann thanks those in the community who helped make all of his classes a success for students, like Michelle Kritzer who owns Casa Del Sol, former That Sandwich Place owner Larry Hawkins, Candy Emporium owner Jeri Powers and Seward.
Resident Evan Werling helped McCann with his entrepreneurship class’s Maverick Challenge, based on the TV show “Shark Tank.”
“Those guys have helped me year after year with things. I really want to thank them for all that they helped me with,” he said.
He also thanks the district’s technology department for helping to keep his business computer labs running.
“It’s unbelievable how great they are,” he said.
When asked to describe his time in Brown County Schools, McCann answered: “Hopefully I helped a lot of kids,” he said.
“I come in every day trying to help kids by teaching things that will help them down the road. That was my main goal.”
“You’re not going to become rich, and that wasn’t my goal. I just wanted to help others,” he said.
One of the other reasons McCann said he wanted to be a teacher was because the person he admires the most, Jesus Christ, was also a teacher.
But unlike going home after a day of painting walls, teaching did not give McCann immediate results of a job well done. “I’d sit at home and I know what I accomplished for sure, and people had told me it was great,” McCann said of painting.
“You don’t get that with teaching a lot. You have to just hope it probably happened. You just don’t hear about it a lot. That’s why I like going to some of the reunions, because you hear how things turned out, like someone working in accounting now. That kind of stuff is always nice to hear.”
As McCann leaves the high school, he offers the following advice to any teacher: Treat every student with respect, and never be afraid to ask for help from your fellow teachers or administration.
“Just show respect to the kids. Make sure you show them that you care about them. You care about their grade; you care about them doing well in your class,” he said.
“They might not do well. They might not care. But you have to show them that you care and that they know you care. You’re there to help if they need it.”
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The Brown County School Board of Trustees unanimously approved Ryan Crenshaw on Dec. 5 to take over the classes of retiring Brown County High School business teacher Vince McCann.
Crenshaw was observing McCann’s classes before the first semester ended.
“Ryan comes to us with a wealth of business knowledge, I think. Not to put him on the spot or anything, he’s a game changer for us in the business program,” Principal Matt Stark said.
McCann and high school social studies teacher Alecia Adams sat on the interview committee. “They were just really impressed,” Stark said.
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