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Longtime Clay High art teacher, coach Douglass Buchanan retires

Bruce Hope bruce@opcfla.com
Posted 4/22/20

GREEN COVE SPRINGS – Thirty years at any job is a long time. Douglass Buchanan, a veteran art teacher at Clay High, will tell you that.

That’s how long the Detroit, Michigan native has been …

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Longtime Clay High art teacher, coach Douglass Buchanan retires


Posted

GREEN COVE SPRINGS – Thirty years at any job is a long time. Douglass Buchanan, a veteran art teacher at Clay High, will tell you that.

That’s how long the Detroit, Michigan native has been teaching at the school. Now, Buchanan has decided that it’s time to put away the easels, paint and the grade book away for good.

With schools being dismissed for the rest of the year by the novel coronavirus, Buchanan won’t get the sendoff he’s earned. He settled into retirement a couple months earlier than expected, he also leaves as education moves to virtual classes on online lessons.

“Originally, I had gotten into graphic design, and I was going to work with computers and things like that when I first got out of college,” said Buchanan. “Where I went to college was Eastern Michigan University, and its mostly a teaching school. When I started taking some of the teaching classes, I kind of liked it. I remembered back in high school. I liked my art classes the most. So, I kind of just took a few more classes and decided this might be something I’d be interested in doing. That’s kind of how I got into it.”

After following his retiring father from Michigan – where there weren’t many teaching openings at the time – to Florida, Buchanan interviewed at Clay High. The rest, they say, is history.

Buchanan started at Clay before it split the junior and high schools. When he began there, he taught grades 7-12.

“He was just planning to retire after 30 years,” said his daughter, Emily Pazel. “I think that’s what he just planned to do, but everything that’s gone on has made this an interesting way to leave. He was telling us that he spent his last day in a live classroom, without even knowing it.”

Pazel is an artist in a different way than her father. She is a writer with a degree in journalism.

“I am a writer,” Pazel said. “He has influenced a more creative background for me as a kid. He encouraged me to pursue writing. I’m not into painting or anything like that as much.” Buchanan has three children who are all Clay High alumni. Pazel’s brother and sister were both in their father’s art class at one point or another.

Buchanan never had any desire to leave the classroom for administrative positions.

“I really never did have any intentions of going into administration,” he said. “I did go into coaching. I coached for a long time. I coached the girl’s soccer JV [junior varsity], and I was the assistant varsity, and then I also coached the boys JV, and I was also the boys’ head varsity, and I did that for 10-15 years. Going into coaching is kind of like administration but not; it’s a little bit because you’re more in the community, more working directly with parents and things like that; other schools and things like that.”

Of the players he has coached, is former University of Maryland Terrapin and Dallas Cowboy Nolan Carroll, who played soccer and football at Clay.

Now Buchanan feels it’s time for him to move on and do some other things. For himself, the students, and the school, it’s time to get someone new with fresh ideas

Buchanan is proud of his tenure at Clay High.

“All three of my kids went to Clay High, and all graduated from Clay High,” Buchanan reminisced. “They all had really good experiences there. I know they’ve had really good experiences, and I would say that the majority of the kids that go to Clay High school had the same experiences as my kids. I was always kind of proud of that.”