Bartlett P.E. teacher set to retire after 21 years
Marsha Vanek, one of the original physical education teachers at Bartlett High School in Elgin Area School District U-46, is set to retire this spring after 21 years of teaching, all at Bartlett.
Among her many accomplishments and honors are: coaching a cheerleading team that took fourth in state; writing the dance curriculum for BHS; choreographing BHS musicals for 14 years; serving as a district mentor; recognition for teaching and dedication; co-chairing fundraisers with girls basketball; and leading the student spirit program Fear Nation.
Vanek holds a master of arts in teaching from Aurora University. She currently teaches three sections of the Junior Leaders program, as well as a modified P.E. class and a freshman level P.E. class. Until three years ago, she taught all the dance classes at BHS.
The Daily Herald caught up with this experienced leader to get her perspective on physical education.
Q. What have you found most rewarding or gratifying about teaching physical education?
Vanek. There are so many rewards teaching that it is hard to decide what to talk about. Seeing smiles on students' faces, or high intensity going on in a class where they are engaged in an activity, and understand how important movement is to their brain readiness to learn is exciting for me.
Teaching the students team skills is also rewarding. When the student can figure out who they are, what they stand for, what they like to do, and what their strengths are, that is priceless. These skills of character, taking initiative, being an effective communicator, organization, creativeness, responsibility, being open minded, and being reflective are skills that they will use forever.
I have a friend who is extremely successful in the business world, and she constantly reminds me that what we are teaching them here in our program is something she has to do for businesses all the time because adults were never given the time to learn these skills.
I could go on and on about the rewards, but the last is graduates that come back or get in touch with me and talk about what they learned and how important it has been in their lives where they are now.
Those are the moments you know you have done what you wanted to do, help students be productive, active adults.
Q. What do you find most challenging?
Vanek. Some of the challenges in physical education are finding enough time for individualized instruction for students when our classes remain so large. I am pretty creative, as are my colleagues, so we bounce ideas off each other to help in this area.
We are continually adjusting to new equipment, concepts, research, technology and social media to update and stay with the changes occurring in society.
The most challenging of all is educating the public that we are an essential tool of the students' educational process, and that it is essential to have it required daily for every student and funded well.
Athletes are only 5 percent of the active community in school. If we can teach students how to be healthy, our health costs as a nation would not be rising so rapidly.
Q. What do you hope students will remember about you and your class?
Vanek. I hope students will remember me as being a teacher who respected them and expected respect from them as a professional.
I also hope they understood my passion for helping students gain knowledge about fitness that is personal to them. I also hope they learned invaluable leadership skills by having an opportunity to make mistakes in a safe environment and encouraged to practice again and again until they got it. Also, that I was passionate about what I taught them.
My discipline is so essential to their lives. You can have all kinds of skills or intelligence, but if you don't take care of yourself and practice healthy habits our body will give out on us.
Being healthy inside and out are the essential building blocks of life, and that is what I have always taught. But most of all that I cared about them as humans with so much potential.