When
Bill Hannan first met Jeanne Tamisiea in the 1980s, she was one of
three finalists for a teaching position on the fine-arts faculty at
Black Hawk College. "You could tell right off the bat that she was
a teacher," Hannan said. "If you are a teacher, you can spot
one."
Tamisiea
"tried to connect immediately," Hannan explained. She made eye
contact and asked questions, and the vibe was less of a job interview
than a classroom in which Tamisiea was the teacher and her
interrogators were her students. "Jeanne sat down to talk to us,"
Hannan said. "The other two [candidates] sat down to be
interviewed."
After
the interviews, Hannan said, the decision to hire Tamisiea was a
foregone conclusion. "We only talked about her," he said. "We
didn't talk about the other two guys."