With enrollment skyrocketing in the 1960s, Tacoma schools turned to the innovative new medium of television to help teach kids. Alongside her dog Cholla, teacher Doris Hubner reached thousands of students every week with her program “Kindergarten at Cholla’s Corner.”
Doris Vernin Rounds Before Tacoma
Doris Vernin Rounds was born in Postville, Iowa, on August 21, 1909, to Jabez Rounds (1886-1923) and Nina Moore Rounds (1887-1929). The family moved to South Dakota. When Doris was 14, her father, a farmer, was killed by a kicking horse.
While still in high school, a teacher invited Doris to teach her kindergarten class when she gave music lessons to high school students upstairs. Doris loved it. She graduated with a first-grade teaching certificate from Northern State Teachers College (1927) and attended the University of South Dakota (1929-1930) to earn a state certificate.
Doris married Eldon R. Hubner (1905-1964) in 1934. They settled in Menno, where he was school principal and later superintendent. “He was my inspiration,” Doris told the News Tribune in 1966, “I think every teacher needs inspiration—from children, from parents and from their own family.” They had two children, Douglas and Sherry.
The predominantly German town did not allow married women to teach, but Doris volunteered to start a kindergarten, helping students learn English.
The couple moved to Tacoma in 1944, where Eldon was made a Red Cross field counselor. Doris taught at Lister Elementary School before being hired to head the teaching staff of a new auxiliary nursery school at Salishan in 1945.
After managing Loomis Armored Car Service for a time, Eldon became a school principal. In 1959, he was made liaison officer between the Tacoma School District and the Tacoma Police Department’s Youth Guidance Division and the Juvenile Courts.
Doris Vernin Rounds Teaching in Tacoma
Doris earned a B.A. from the University of Puget Sound in 1952 and an M.A. in 1959. She taught kindergarten at Washington Elementary and Hoyt Elementary Schools.
She became known for her innovative teaching methods. In 1956, Doris started bringing “Willie Baa-Baa,” the Hampshire lamb, to Washington Elementary. The mild-mannered animal stayed in her garage during the week and rode in her front seat to school each day. Students could sheep-sit Willie on weekends. The animal inspired many sheep-related art projects and story times. The children adored him.
Doris was a popular speaker at PTA and community meetings. She became president of the Tacoma Chapter of the Association for Childhood Education. She belonged to other professional organizations and the Mason Methodist Church.
Teaching Tacoma Kids on TV
Television was still relatively new when the Tacoma School District created KTPS (Channel 62) in 1960. Programs were broadcast live across the city for classroom use. This also meant anyone could tune in. Very few districts across the country had similar programs.
In 1964, the district television director, Robert Slingland, asked Doris to host a program. “Kindergarten at Cholla’s Corner” was born.
Broadcast live every Monday from a studio at the Tacoma Vocational-Technical Institute, the real star of the show was a five-and-a-half-pound black-and-white “Cholla,” the deer chihuahua. Doris had bought the dog while teaching summer classes at the University of Arizona in 1961. She taught similar summer classes at the University of Puget Sound and Pacific Lutheran University.
Cholla was often recognized when Doris took him along shopping.
Children and adult guests (anyone from bus drivers to cops) on the show were called “Cholla’s Friends.” He was gentle and rarely barked, even at the frequent animal guests, including creatures from the Point Defiance Zoo (and pets). One time, a pet garter snake got loose from its jar in her car after the show. After an extensive search, she found it in the glove compartment!
Doris used creativity and imagination to teach basic math, spelling, safety, hygiene, citizenship, and more through songs, stories, riddles, and activities. She also had puppets, including an eight-foot-long dragon that taught science.
Throughout the week, Doris visited kindergarten classes with Cholla. “Goodbye, everybody,” she’d tell them when it was time to go. “We’ll see you all at Cholla’s corner.”
Teacher of the Year, Tacoma’s Doris Vernin Rounds
In 1965, Delta Kappa Gamma awarded her a scholarship to visit 11 European countries during the summer to study early childhood education. The following year, she was voted Washington State Teacher of the Year by the Washington Education Association.
In 1966, Doris became the instruction program coordinator for the new Head Start program.
“Cholla’s Corner” began to reach a statewide audience through the University of Washington’s Channel 9. However, as Cholla grew older, filming new segments became increasingly difficult. While students could still enjoy tapes of “The Best of Cholla,” the program was retired in 1970.
As a sendoff, Doris visited Hoyt Elementary, where she had once taken Cholla as a puppy. Students were so excited to see the dog, the News Tribune writer Rod Cardwell covering the event joked, “you’d have thought the President had arrived.”
Doris Vernin Rounds Retirement
Doris retired in 1971 and moved to Fountain Hills, Arizona, with her new husband, John J. Cochran (1905-2001). Cholla’s death two years later made headlines in Tacoma. Doris planted a cholla cactus to mark his grave.
Active in her retirement, Doris served as founder and president of the Fountain Hills Library Board and as a deacon at Fountain Hills Presbyterian Church. She passed away on November 1, 1995.
“When I go into a classroom,” she told Scope magazine in 1966, “I forget the problems of the world.” Helping students grow was her passion. And whether through television or the classroom, Doris Hubner dedicated her life to them.