‘It’s been a journey’. La Grange teacher calls it a career after four decades in the classroom

Nearly 40 years after she began her teaching career, Nancy Ray Tusek is near the finish line.

Her last day will be Friday, June 6.

Sitting in the third-grade classroom at Ogden Avenue School in La Grange, she reflected on a career that began in September 1985 and how teaching–most importantly the students–has changed.

You didn’t see computers in the clutches of 8- and 9-year-old boys and girls when she started teaching second graders in September of 1985 at Highlands Elementary School.

Tusek, of Downers Grove, turns 62 on June 4. She can’t imagine another career which she wanted since growing up in Chicago’s Hegewisch neighborhood, where she enjoyed pretending to teach classes to childhood friends.

Tusek taught at Highlands Elementary until 1992 when her first daughter was born. The next years were spent subbing for other teachers, often those on maternity leave, until she began teaching at Ogden Avenue in 2010, going full time in 2013, working with third-graders.

Tusek raised two daughters, Allison and Lauren, with her husband of 27 years, Donald. Don died unexpectedly of a heart attack while running seven years ago. Lauren is a school teacher in Kentucky.

After Don died, she took a month off “then I knew I had to get back (to the classroom),” she said.

She never wanted to teacher higher than third grade.

“I do enjoy this age. They can do things on their own, but they still need you. They’re like sponges. They absorb everything. You not only teach them about academics, but about life. How to treat people. How to be empathetic. How to work in a group,” Tusek said.

She is encouraged that her students are enthused to learn about cursive handwriting, math and current events. Like them, she’s enthused about school.

“I adore the people. I’ve been with the other third-grade teachers, the core four, for a long time,” she said of Lauren Vaupell, Angela Plecas and Jenny Kaminski.“The band’s breaking up. It’s hard,” Tusek said.

Thinking back, she said that while technology is of great use in the classroom, it’s not perfect.

She recalled the COVID-19 pandemic “when kids were on their screens all the time.”

“The few years after COVID were very challenging. Masks. We couldn’t see faces. ... And we had to pull them back from technology. ‘Instead of typing your paper, let’s write it’,” she said.

Students in June 2025 “act older because they are exposed to so much now,” Tusek said.

She has changed, too. Rather than bring tests home for grading, she stays at school “for an hour on my time when the school day ends” to grade papers. “As I got older I found you have to turn off. Just like any other job,” she said. “The kids become part of you. Their problems become your problems.”

Principal Regina Leeberg called Tusek special because of “her care and concern for the kids. ... That’s very important. ... She’s in it. She’s positive. Solution oriented.”

Tusek has 20 students in her class this year. One of them, Owen Krall, 8, of La Grange Park, gave her a good review.

“She’s very kind. She helps you get really good at stuff. She’s a really good teacher,” Krall said.

One of her first students, Tony Musillami, appeared in a photo with the then Nancy Ray for a Suburban Life story about a rookie teacher in September 1985.

“It’s been a journey,” she told Musillami. “I have one memory,” Musillami, 48, of La Grange, said. “There was a day I forgot to turn in my homework.”

He tried to pawn off another student’s paper as his. That didn’t go well.

“Miss Ray used it as a teaching moment. ... I had to re-do it.”

Leeberg found Musillami through Facebook. He paid a visit to Tusek’s classroom on May 27, bringing flowers and a hug.

Vaupell knows the school community will miss Tusek.

“I know a lot of people don’t want the teacher who’s retiring because she’s checked out. Nancy is trying new things. She has not checked out. Still coming up with new creative ideas. I joke with her, ‘Nancy, take it easy’,” Vaupell said.

Tusek will travel in her retirement, spend time with three grandchildren, volunteer, play golf, hike and play pickleball.

She may eventually return to substitute teaching, but not during the 2025-26 school year.

“I knew it was time to retire when I had one of my student’s children in my class a few years ago. That was the big whoa,” she said.