From sharing a few last laughs to making this semester their best yet, four teachers and administrators who have decided to retire share their hopes going into their final semester at KHS.
Christine Lindquist
Christine Lindquist, senior principal, will not allow herself to cry until March.
“I told [myself] I cannot be emotionally upset until [then],” she said, “but after that, I can just cry all the time if I want to.”
For Lindquist, leaving KHS is a hard decision, but the right one.
“I feel like this decision comes from really seriously thinking about it,” Lindquist said. “It’s not something that I said all [of] the sudden. There are a lot of things that went into it. Of course one is financial, and then there are several personal reasons. And I’ve always been a person that loves change, and I’ve always been a person who likes to do new things and find new challenges. If I can’t continually learn, I have a problem.”
Going into her last semester, Lindquist plans to maintain the strong goals and attitude she has had during her tenure at KHS.
“A lot of people become ambivalent when they’re getting ready to retire, and I’m sure those feelings will come along in the spring. I know everybody says you start having that ambivalence, but at the same time I know, I really know, it’s the right decision for me right now.”
Lindquist plans to explore other options after her retirement, though she said the decision to pursue a new job is not one that has to be made quickly.
“Am I going to be happy just doing nothing? No,” Lindquist said. “But I’ve given myself permission to take time to look and see what’s out there and what I want to be doing.”
Lindquist knows what she wants to do in her final semester at KHS, though, and that is have fun.
“I hope that I have as much fun my last semester as I did this semester. This has been one of the most, and I don’t know if I can say the most only because I’ve had a lot of fun years in my career in education, but this has just been at the top,” Lindquist said. “The senior class has been incredible. I couldn’t ask for a better class to end my time with. They’re just so much fun, and they’re fantastic.”
In her final semester, she hopes to ensure as many students as possible graduate.
While Lindquist said she is excited to pursue a new part of her life, she is also sad to leave her KHS friends behind.
“What I will miss most is just the atmosphere of this school,” Lindquist said. “The kids. What they make it. How everybody just loves this place, and kids go away loving this place, and everybody goes away just so proud that they went to Kirkwood High School. The next biggest thing is the faculty. My colleagues. I’ll miss working with everybody everyday. We laugh a lot. We talk a lot. We grow a lot.”
Laurie Seibel
Laurie Seibel, librarian, may be retiring, but she hopes this time next year students can still find her among the shelves of the library doing what she always does.
“I want to volunteer in the Kirkwood High School library doing exactly what I’m doing now,” Seibel said. “The district gave me an opportunity I had a hard time refusing.”
Besides continuing her current duties of organizing library shelves, helping students with work and shushing library-goers, Seibel plans to spend more time around the house for her sons Joey, freshman, and Charlie, NKMS sixth grader.
“Maybe I should learn to dust my house and cook,” Seibel said. “No, learn to cook and dust my house.”
Seibel has a long list of reasons she loves working as a librarian, including the students and teachers she works with.
“What I’m going to miss the most is having an appreciative audience for my lame library jokes,” she said. “I will also miss all the students who I dearly love and interacting with the teens here and the staff members, especially my dear friends Kim Heyel [librarian] and Julie Healey [library assistant].”
Seibel sponsors the Gateway Book Club, the teacher book club and a new parent book club, and she plans to continue those duties in the coming years.
“There’s no place I’d rather be in the whole school,” Seibel said. “We’re persistent, and we love teaching the database and helping students with research questions and helping match independent reading to their interests.”
Going into her last semester, Seibel said her major hope is to “become as cool as Mr. Spiguzza [retired art teacher].” She said this includes shushing students, which she already does well, and spraying them with a squirt bottle. To attest to her silencing skills, Seibel shows off a librarian action figure given to her by a student, complete with finger-shushing action.
“Hopefully I’ll be here, doing this same thing next year,” Seibel said. “I just love it.”
To hear Seibel tell some of her self-described “lame library jokes,” click the link below:
Lieschen Fink
Dr. Lieschen Fink, dance teacher, has to be constantly moving.
“I want to dance, I want to teach,” Fink said. “There’s no way I want to give this place up.”
But with age, Fink said, the ability to stay moving gets harder.
“I work out every hour with my classes. I’m 52 years old,” Fink said. “I hurt, but I just suck it up. If I can continue with just half a load, that would be fantastic.”
That is not the only think causing Fink to retire from her full-time teaching job. Over the summer, her mother became ill with an immune disorder, and Fink sees it as her job to take care of her.
“She lives behind me, so I check on her every night,” Fink said. “It would kill her if she could not live in her own house. She took care of me. When I coached for 18 years, she helped with my kids. Now it’s my turn for me to be around with my kids and my mom.”
In an optimal situation, Fink said she hopes she can continue on with Kirkwood part time.
“I can’t stop working. I would drive someone crazy,” she said. “To not work here would be horrible. Oh, that would be horrible.”
Fink said her spirit keeps her going and enhances her love for her job.
“The excitement, the enthusiasm, the youth, the kids,” Fink said. “I have to keep that spirit. I was raised with it, and here I can keep it.”
In the next year, she and her sons plan to travel around the country to major college football games.
“I love football more than dance,” Fink said. “It’s crazy, I know, but I grew up on the sidelines.”
For now though, Fink just hopes to maintain her Kirkwood spirit for the rest of the year and, hopefully, for years to come.
Karen Wentzel
Sitting in traffic on her way to work, Karen Wentzel, English teacher, reminds herself to think “TTNY,” meaning, “this time next year.” Laughing in the lunchroom with her co-workers, she reminds herself again. TTNY.
Wentzel calls the phrase her mantra for this year and reminds herself of it often.
“It is bittersweet,” Wentzel said. “That’s a word that’s always bandied about, but I’m living it now. There are times when I think, ‘Yay!’ and others when I think, ‘Oh no.’”
Wentzel has her plans for her spare time all laid out. She plans to volunteer at Open Door Animal Sanctuary, where she adopted her two dogs, and at a food pantry in her neighborhood, as well as in the KHS library.
“Teaching is a job that takes up a lot of time,” Wentzel said. “Now I want to be able to give back.”
Retiring now has always been her goal, she said.
“I’ve taught for 20 years in the Kirkwood District, and I think it’s time that I try new stuff,” Wentzel said.
Wentzel will miss the people in the district more than anything, including her friends on staff and her students, who she said help keep her energized.
“Teaching is a way to be in high school without actually being in high school with all the pressure,” she said. “I love being around teenagers. It’s fun.”
Having fun is foremost on Wentzel’s plan for her last semester.
“I have great students this year,” Wentzel said. “And for the past few years they have been wonderful. It’s really been so much fun to be in the classroom, and it’s surreal to be done.”
