Pablo students celebrate season
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PABLO — Pablo Elementary students honored both the Christmas season and the memory of a beloved teacher with a holiday program Dec. 22.
With a packed house of parents, grandparents and siblings in the school gym, choir teacher Kathy Briney led five choirs of kindergarten through fourth-graders in traditional carols and some contemporary numbers like “The Santa Claus Rock.” The fourth-grade choir also presented a special tribute called “Peaceful” to Mariea Blake, a former second-grade teacher who passed away in September.
Blake was a fixture in the Ronan-Pablo School District for many years, Principal Frank Ciez said, and taught at Pablo Elementary for at least a decade before retiring last year. And when the school needed a substitute fourth-grade teacher at the beginning of this fall, Blake returned to fill in for two weeks. But in September, she was hospitalized after a fall at her home and passed away soon after.
“So it was a real sad deal for us,” Ciez said. “We miss her.”
Briney, a 26-year veteran of the annual Christmas program, and her students had been working on their routines since Thanksgiving, she said, and the fourth-graders even practiced throughout lunch over the past couple of weeks.
“It’s just fun to see how it turns out — it is a lot of work, but I think it’s something the kids really remember,” she said.
“(Briney) put a lot of blood, sweat and tears into this program, and we thought it was wonderful,” Ciez added.
