Wealth of teaching retiring in Wonder Lake

WONDER LAKE – Three longtime teachers are bracing for the final days of class at Harrison School.

Karen Derner, Deborah Draper and Diane Etten, collectively, have been teaching at the kindergarten-through-8th grade school for 114 years. After the school’s May 30 graduation, they’ll retire from teaching.

Derner and Draper are Wonder Lake residents. Etten lives in Lake Geneva, Wis.

“It feels more comfortable going into retirement with friends,” said Draper, who has taught for 33 years at the school at 6809 McCullom Lake Road in Wonder Lake.

Draper said she looks forward to “taking care of things I haven’t had time for before,” which include spending more time with her family, traveling and catching up on books.

After 40 years of teaching, Derner wanted “an opportunity to start something else. ... My new career, whatever that might be.”

Etten, after teaching for 41 years, decided it was “time to move on to do something else.”

With retirement approaching, they also anticipate a more free schedule that allows them to sleep in longer and not have homework at night.

“People think [teachers] can go home and just sit there,” Derner said. “It’s a lot of extra work that you have to do. So it’d be nice to have your evenings free.”

But at the same time, bidding farewell to a profession and a place after so many years won’t be easy.

“I don’t think [retirement will hit] until September when everybody else goes back and I don’t have to come in two weeks early to get the room ready and set up,” Derner said.

“You’re in such a routine and it’s been your routine for so many years that it sort of feels like a part of you,” Draper said.

The three women have planned to meet as a way of coping when classes resume in the fall.

“We’re all planning to get together for lunch on the first day of school to get us through that first day,” Etten said.

“It’s going to be tough,” Derner said. “Withdrawal.”

Principal Anne Huff, herself a former student of Derner’s, said the community will “definitely be missing” the three women who launched their teaching careers at Harrison and remained there long enough to teach the children of former students.

“How many kids they’ve taught in the community over the years is amazing,” Huff said.

Michele Parks of Wonder Lake was in Etten’s class three decades ago. This year, Caitlyn, her 8-year-old daughter, had Etten as her second-grade teacher.

“I actually requested her last year,” Parks said. “I still have a special place in my heart for Mrs. Etten because I liked her a lot when she was my teacher.”

Parks knows of at least three other students with parents who are also Etten’s former students.

“To have strong teachers stay on as long as she has is definitely good for the school. It also helps promote a stronger community, too,” Parks said.

Going into the teaching profession was something each of the three women aspired to when they were students.

“I think I had good examples, role models as teachers that made me think it was something I’d like to to do, too,” Etten said.

Draper is a former Harrison School student and recalled how one teacher affected her career choice.

“My favorite teacher, Mr. Josserand, he touched a lot of lives in English and he went on to teach at McHenry High School. He was the one I looked up to the most.”

Throughout the years, the education field has seen changes that have been both enriching and challenging, the teachers said.

For Derner, the emphasis on technology in the classroom has been the biggest change in the past few years.

On a smaller level, cursive penmanship is no longer taught in the class as it was in the past, Draper said.

Etten has seen a significant change with the “increased expectations for the students.” But, overall, she said, teaching is “headed in the right direction.”

“We’re teaching students to be self-learners and motivators rather than just teaching facts,” she said.

Etten, a Decatur native, came to Wonder Lake to teach, “not knowing a single person in the area.” Her plan, she said, was to stay at the school for two years and “move on somewhere else, maybe a larger school district.”

She eventually met her husband, Ken, through his sister-in-law, who also worked at the school. After she set up the pair for a blind date, the rest was history. Etten even invited her third-grade class to her 1983 wedding in Woodstock.

“It’s a good community,” Derner said. “The parents step up and support us.”

“They’re so active. Our PTO is fantastic,” Draper said. “They bought us quite a few SmartBoards.”

Although there have been difficult and frustrating times throughout the years at school, the memorable highlights – like a surprise birthday party students planned for Derner or a project Draper’s students took on after the Sept. 2001 terrorist attacks to raise more than a $1,000 for the Red Cross – made the teachers feel rewarded.

The three encourage younger teachers, including the school’s new hires this fall, to be prepared for challenges and accept the successes.

“There are going to be frustrations you’ll meet,” Derner said. “You’ll go home some days and wonder ‘Why am I doing this?’ Then you see a student do something and it clicks and they like doing it and you’ll feel that’s worth it. They’ve got it, I’ve done a good thing. Don’t give up.”