Teachers retiring during the pandemic miss saying goodbye
- 25 Jun 2020
Karen Ann Cullotta
For the roughly 1,600 Illinois public school teachers who are retiring this month, stepping away from the classroom in the midst of a global pandemic that shuttered schools is proving especially heartrending.
With scuttled in-person goodbyes. and their final days as educators unfolding on computer screens in their home offices instead of in classrooms, teachers retiring at the end of this tumultuous school year leave their schools under conditions they never could have imagined when they began their careers decades ago.
Darcia Scafidi, fourth grade teacher at Nerge Elementary School in Roselle
After spending 35 years as an elementary school teacher, Darcia Scafidi says she never grew tired of her profession, but as a woman of faith, she decided to retire in order to answer a call to civil rights work.
“Well, it didn’t take long for my new calling to start … exactly one day,” said Scafidi, 60, whose childhood memories include marching with her parents alongside the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. when he visited Chicago.
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“I feel like I’m being called, and my skills can be used elsewhere,” Scafidi said. “I love children, but it’s time.”
During her years at Nerge Elementary School in Roselle, Scafidi was known for keeping a special notebook each school year, inscribed with observations of her students. Those detailed anecdotes — the time a student noticed a classmate was crying, and patted them on the back, the student who could always sense if she was having a rough day — were then revealed to the children on the last day of school, along with ideas of possible careers that would fit their talents and strengths.
“I wouldn’t tell them this is what they should do, but I let them know that the world is waiting for them to step up to make life better for others,” Scafidi said.
On May 30, Scafidi organised a peaceful, socially distanced racial justice rally in Wheaton.
“I have been educated by my work as a District 54 teacher, and now, I have everything I need to take the next steps,” Scafidi said, adding: “Not only is my mind open, but my heart is open, too.”
Margo Pinns, fifth grade teacher at Salt Creek Elementary School in Elk Grove Village
Growing up in a large family, Margo Pinns would often recruit her brothers and sisters to play school, and when her siblings wouldn’t comply, she lined up her menagerie of stuffed animals in a tree house “classroom.”
“When people ask me how I decided to become a teacher, I tell them teaching found me," said Pinns, 55. “I can’t explain why, but I always knew I wanted to help.”
After graduating from Illinois State University in 1986, Pinns began her career as a first grade teacher at Juliette Low Elementary School in Arlington Heights. She would remain at Community Consolidated School District 59 for her entire 34 years as an educator.
“The world around us has changed, and some students are coming to school with more needs these days, but children have always had a need for structure, safety and to have someone in the classroom they can count on,” Pinns said. “These fifth graders are getting ready for junior high, so they want to be ready, because they think it’s going to be so much harder, and they hang on your every word. Even though we’re doing remote learning, I let all of them know, ‘you’re ready, I’m proud of you, and off you go.’”
Donna Wielgolewski, AP Human Geography, World Civilizations, Wheaton North High School
Longtime Wheaton North High School teacher Donna Wielgolewski, 70, said she was devastated when she learned in mid-March that the state’s schools were being closed for the remainder of what was to be her final year of teaching.
“My heart broke. … I was so sad, especially because this senior class was a group of children I am particularly close with,” Wielgolewski said.
“There’s no closure without being able to say goodbye to my students, and I’m not able to do my end-of-the-year traditions," she said.
Fondly called “Mrs. Wiggs” by legions of Wheaton North students, both past and present, Wielgolewski was known for distributing decorative pencils she bought during summer visits to Europe with her husband, awarding the souvenirs for achievements like the most improved student.
History class was never boring with Wielgolewski at the helm, where an industrial revolution lesson featured students role-playing factory workers on an assembly line.
“I would slowly dim the lights in the classroom, and play music that sounded like a factory, and I would play the foreman, and start yelling and shouting at them, ‘You’re lazy! You’re not meeting quota,’” Wielgolewski said.
Raised on Chicago’s Southwest Side, where her father was a CTA bus driver, Wielgolewski received a scholarship for education majors, making her the first in her family to go to college.
“My mother died at the age of 62, during my freshman year of college, and when I saw her for the last time, she told me, ‘Whatever happens, just finish school,’” Wielgolewski said.
Tribune News Service