Batavia Lutheran school principal retires after 43 years
Holding back tears, Glenn Steinbrenner stood on a stage Friday at Immanuel Lutheran School in Batavia, swinging a handbell to dismiss students on his last day of school.
Students rose, cheering for the man who led the school for the last 13 of his 43 years in Lutheran parochial-school education.
Steinbrenner said he added up his time in Lutheran schools, from first grade at St. Martini School on the South Side of Chicago to Luther South High School and Concordia Teachers College (now University) in River Forest, and teaching, it totaled 10,000 days.
His desire to help children grow in their Christian faith showed to the end, when he gave certificates to students who had nearly perfect attendance at church services — “something I feel is more important than school attendance,” he said.
Offering high-quality academics is important, he said. “But that is temporal. The Christian education is eternal.”
His start
Steinbrenner always wanted to be a teacher.
“It was just such a natural thing. I just thought it was a real neat thing to do,” he said.
Rather than assigning him a post when he graduated, officials with the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod suggested he interview for a job as assistant principal at Bethany Lutheran School in Naperville. His special qualification? Being a man. The school's male principal was taking a leave of absence, and church officials wanted a man in the building during the school day, Steinbrenner recalled.
He spent 14 years there, then nine as principal of St. Paul in Rochelle, and six years starting and leading a school in Colorado before he came to Immanuel.
Each had its challenges. In Rochelle, he took over at a school that had declined to 70 students and had fired its principal and two of the teachers. He also had to deal with the school-day death of a teacher who had a heart attack.
At Immanuel, he came in while the church was being sued by neighbors over its addition of a gymnasium, institutional kitchen and middle school wing.
Best memories
The highlights? “When you see a child and how they have grown and matured. It just does my heart good,” Steinbrenner said.
“The highlight of my days is in the morning, when I greet kids with high-fives (and, in flu season, fist bumps) in the hallway,” he said, Their younger siblings look forward to it, even a 6-month-old who holds out her fist when she sees him.
Immanuel was just starting a middle school when he arrived. The 2004 graduating class had nine students. Sunday, there will be 19. There were 174 students in kindergarten through eighth grade this year, and 68 in preschool.
Steinbrenner was named the 2012 Lutheran Education Association's Distinguished Elementary Administrator of the Year. And the National Lutheran School Accreditation Commission awarded the school an Exemplary Status Award in 2009. Its graduates consistently make the honor roll at public high schools, and this year all nine boys who applied to Marmion Academy were accepted, Steinbrenner said.
“It was one of the easiest decisions for my family to send my kids here, because Glenn's program and what he has done here over the years has established this place as a foundation for creating disciples for Christ,” Immanuel congregation Chairman William McLane said.
“The family atmosphere, the similarity in values that different families have. The fact that the teachers are part of the congregation and know the families as fellow worshippers on a Sunday morning,” Steinbrenner said, distinguishes Immanuel from a public school.
Steinbrenner, 64, and his wife, Connie, a preschool teacher at St. Paul in Aurora, plan to move to Colorado to be closer to their children and grandchildren. He has already been asked to fill in as in interim principal at a school there, but he hasn't decided. He thinks it might be nice to have a less stressful job in line with his hobbies, such as working in a hardware store.
“It's all in God's hands. He is going to be awfully busy in the next couple months straightening out my life,” Steinbrenner said.