'Another Lincoln High job well done' for longtime English teacher

Deborah McGinn sets down her coffee mug and walks up to the three nursing students in Union College scrubs waiting in line at The Mill in College View.

She flashes a smile as bright as the August sun outside, then introduces herself.

“If you ever need help with writing essays, I’ll be across the street,” says McGinn.

Once a teacher, always a teacher.

It’s just that now McGinn isn’t standing in front of her classroom at Lincoln High School, where she’s spent the past nearly 40 years in the English Department. There, she left an unmatched legacy, say her former students and colleagues, founding the city’s first ever slam poetry team and running the school’s literary magazine.

But her new role — a writing consultant at Union College — will still allow McGinn to do what’s she always loved: helping students discover the joys of writing.

“I’m just meant to be with students,” she said. “That’s all there is to it.”

Born in O’Neill, McGinn spent her childhood in Lincoln, discovered a love of teaching by playing school with dolls and stuffed animals as students.

“It was a passion of hers,” her father, Jerry McGinn, said. “She just loves teaching.”

She always had a passion for writing and books, too, riding her bike to the spiffy new Gere Branch Library growing up.

“I read as many books as I could,” she said. “I did all those reading contests.”

Lincoln High School poetry slam members (from left) Elaine Samsel, Charlie Curtis-Beard, Itahi Sanchez (far right) and sponsor Deborah McGinn hold their first-place trophy after winning the High School Poetry Slam finals in April 2013.

Journal Star file photo

But by the time she graduated from Pius X High School, McGinn wasn’t sure if teaching was the career for her. She originally planned on studying at Southeast Community College to be a dental assistant, and later advertising at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

“But that voice was just like, ‘What am I doing?’ I want to teach,” McGinn said.

So she changed career paths — teaching English it was — and when it came to picking a school to do her practicum, she told her professor she wanted the best student-teaching experience she could get.

Go to Lincoln High, the professor said. McGinn did, and she never looked back.

Part of the reason she stayed was the supportive administration, she says, from Sam Nelson to Mike Wortman to Mark Larson. Part of it was the diversity of the students.

“She just loved to be at Lincoln High,” her father said. “It just fit.”