Immediately after taking a step into English teacher Kathy Recher’s seventh grade classroom, one knows that it’s a place where magic happens. Colorful collaged paper bags hang from the ceiling, a tree made entirely of dum-dums sits on her desk, and a memory wall covered in anecdotal sticky notes is straight to the right. It’s a room with an energy that could only be produced by the passion of a teacher and the productive struggle and excitement of the students. All of the marvel in an elementary school classroom is paired with the academic growth of a university lecture hall, and the marriage between the two is what makes English with Recher a life-changing experience for her students.
For 17 years, Recher has taught English in that same classroom, but will be retiring from her teaching position at the end of this school year. She said the decision to retire was one she was unsure of, but that it came down to needing to spend more time with her father, husband, and two sons, Jeff and Mark, who live on opposite ends of the country.
“I feel so lucky that I’ve had a profession that I look forward to every day,” Recher said. Other than traveling and spending time with family, she does not have immediate plans. “It’s going to be a new chapter in life. I’m going to see what life brings me.”
To anyone who has held a conversation with Recher, it’s clear that she was born to teach. The dream of being a teacher was one that Recher said she possessed since she was a little girl playing “school” in her basement. As a student she said she would explain concepts to her classmates when they couldn’t understand them.
“I just loved to see someone not understand something, and try to figure out the maze of how to help them, not tell them, but help them come to the answer. I loved to do that,” Recher said.
At age 21, Recher began teaching. She initially felt sure that high school was what she was meant to teach, so her first 11 years were spent in high schools in Iowa and St. Paul. After teaching at a private school, she took a break to stay home with her then middle-school aged sons. Watching them go through so much change in middle school led her to change the path of her teaching career.
“I just decided that middle schoolers need people who love them,” Recher said. “There is no other period of time in your life, other than birth to one, that you change more physically, emotionally, or intellectually. I still adore teaching high school students, but I just felt like I was pulled to this.”
Recher began her Orono career at the old middle school a year before the new middle school was built. She remembers interviewing for her job with Principal Benson, and the excitement he radiated when he showed her the blueprints to the new school.
“I am glad that he took a chance on me,” Recher said, reflecting with a bittersweet smile. After spending her year teaching at the old middle school by pushing a cart from room to room, she staked her ground in the familiar corner classroom of the seventh grade Down House. It is a room that has seen Recher leave an imprint on nearly 3,000 students.
“She was the first teacher to seriously stretch my limits, both as a learner and a person,” freshman McKenzie Pearson said. “She was the person who made me love the intense struggle of learning, and the satisfaction of the post struggle.”
“I give her a good amount of credit for making me the student that I am in high school,” senior Chase Olsen said, “I was part of the 21 club, because she had the philosophy where if you do something for 21 days it becomes a habit, so she wanted to see if I could stay organized for 21 days.” Five years later, Olsen is onward bound for the University of Southern California this fall, despite starting seventh grade as a C student.
Recher’s fervor for middle school teaching led to her being awarded the Minnesota Middle Level Educator of the Year in 2009. She said that she didn’t feel the need to be recognized, because “if you don’t worry about who gets credit, you’ll get farther,” but that she loved the opportunity to talk about the importance of middle level education.
Part of her success is due to her teaching philosophy. “A word that I think is really important in life and education, is ‘grit,’” Recher said. “It’s the combination of passion and perseverance. That idea that I’ll never give up, and I never want anyone I’m working with to give up, because I know we can get there. We just have to figure out how.”
Both students and staff said they greatly benefitted from, and loved the time they spent with Recher at Orono.
“I’ve learned so much by being able to work alongside her, seeing how she relates to students in such a personal way. She’s inspired me to want to be a better teacher every time I step foot in her classroom,” social studies teacher Nathan Thompson said. “She never gives up on a student, even when the students want to give up on themselves. She will pull them, dragging, kicking, and screaming to the end point, and they look back and say ‘Wow, what a difference she made in my life.’”
“She always helps you out when you’re in productive struggle, and she always says ‘you’re not there yet’ no matter what, if you fail or anything,” seventh grader Clare Cashin said.
Students and staff have truly appreciated her compassionate presence and uncanny knack for teaching, and will miss being able to visit her in her classroom, or work alongside her, but wish her happiness and success in her retirement.