San Manuel kindergarten teacher Jerry Kyle visits with a student at the First Avenue Elementary School in San Manuel. Kyle, who spent 22 years working at the San Manuel copper mine, is among the ex-miners who have become schoolteachers since it closed in 1999.

Jim Davis / Arizona Daily Star

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When the San Manuel copper mine closed in 1999, its 1,700 displaced workers — many of whom had only known mining until then — were forced to find other jobs.

Some went back to school for more education, while others used the skills they already had to work elsewhere. But a few got teaching degrees and settled into classrooms around Pinal County.

Jerry Kyle was a mechanic. He worked in all the departments of the mine, he said. He spent a lot of time underground, and was a supervisor by the time his 22 years at the mine ended. Now he teaches kindergarten at First Avenue Elementary School in San Manuel.

"They offered all kinds of package deals" when the mine closed, he said. "They were training people to be a truck driver, pipe fitter, meat cutters. My wife, who's been a teacher forever, suggested that I ask them for the funds for books and tuition to go back to school and get a four-year degree."

So he did.

"I said, 'Doesn't this state need teachers?' And they couldn't hardly argue," Kyle said.

He went to school, getting the second two years of his four-year degree at Central Arizona College, through an agreement the college had with Northern Arizona University to train teachers. Kyle said he was the only man in his student group, which had 13 women.

The former miners fit right in with the other teachers, said Elizabeth Dorgan, principal at First Avenue Elementary and Avenue B Elementary.

"A lot of teachers go into education and do it for the whole time they work," she said. But the miners in their second career "fit right in."

Things are definitely different in the classroom though, Kyle says. Besides not having to breathe pollution from the copper smelter, which Kyle said infiltrated the community when the mine was operational, he has entirely different responsibilities.

"My day requires much more attention to organization and control of what time I have to work with than I ever had in any other kind of work," he said. "The minutes and seconds count in this business. That wasn't all that important before, but in this business, you cannot waste a second."

Kyle said he loves teaching kindergartners because the kids are primed for learning.

"Kindergarten kids get to come in pretty fresh and ready to open doors and learn, and you can't beat that," he said.

But Avenue B sixth-grade teacher Manuel Chavez said he likes teaching older kids because he can put his mining experience to work in the classroom.

Chavez was an underground miner for most of his years at the mine. He worked his way up to become a heavy-equipment mechanic the last year the mine was open.

He relates a lot of what he knows from his work experience to what the kids need to apply their learning, Dorgan said.

"I take my life experiences and when I'm teaching a state standard, kids will ask, 'When am I ever going to use this?' I tell them, 'This is how I used it in my previous job, this is how I needed to add, multiply, use correct grammar.' It makes more sense to them," he said.

Chavez started working in the mine to pay for school, but he always wanted to be a teacher.

"My intentions were to work and then go to school after six months," he said. "The money was good, so I kept working. Six months turned into 20 years."

Chavez seized the opportunity to pursue his original dream when the mine closed.

He said the schoolwork was hard, and he had to take remedial courses just to catch up, but he still finished his degree in four years.

The former miners are just as good at teaching as those who have never done anything else, Dorgan said.

"There's no difference," she said. "They're very professional and very good teachers."

The students appreciate the miners' life experiences, and Chavez said they beg for stories.

"They love it when I tell stories, when I can relate a story to an objective I'm teaching," he said.

And even those hard concepts — such as fractions — are related back to real-life experiences in Chavez's classroom.

He tells the students that when the miners needed 20 feet of pipe, they couldn't just cut a 20-foot section.

"You're always going to use increments to get to the correct length," he tells them.

Anyone can be a teacher, he said, because everyone is a student.

"I felt like a first-grader going back to school," Chavez said. "I felt anxiety, but my advice is, take that giant step because education is everything."

There is a big difference in teaching versus mining, though.

"When I worked for the mine, I had time. Now I have no time," said Kyle,who said that is why he's thankful for summer break.

Chavez said some things are easier outside the mine.

"Working with adults, working in the mine is harder," he said. "Because when you're working with adults, you know that we should know better. Children don't know better and you can mold them. It's harder to work with adults every day."

I take my life experiences and when I'm teaching a state standard, kids will ask, 'When am I ever going to use this?' I tell them, 'This is how I used it in my previous job.'

Manuel Chavez

ex-miner, current teacher