Skunes enjoyed all 33 years of career

By KREMENA SPENGLER, Journal Staff Writer
NEW ULM — Sharon Skunes may have fallen into teaching math by accident — nevertheless, she has loved every minute of it.

Raised on a farm near Fargo, N.D., Skunes, a retiring veteran District 88 math teacher, received her bachelor’s degree in math at North Dakota State University in Fargo.

She didn’t know at first what she wanted to major in — until, walking through the campus one day, it suddenly hit her — math.

Partly, this choice was with the expectation of getting a good adviser. Partly, it was in reaction to having two older sisters who majored in home economics — she wanted to be as different as possible from them.

Like many others, Skunes was influenced in her choices by high school teachers who made the extra effort to ensure that their students succeeded — “sometimes, it’s in the back of your mind to want to do the same,” she said.

Upon graduation in 1970, Skunes taught for a year in Madison, Minn., then she married and followed her husband to a job in Sleepy Eye.

She worked as a paraprofessional there until a teaching job opening enabled her to join New Ulm Public Schools.

That was in 1975.

She has been a math teacher for District 88 ever since.

She taught Junior High students until 1984, when she was re-assigned to the High School. She has taught every math course “we teach here,” and enjoyed their content equally well.

At a point in her career, she earned a master’s degree in learning disabilities from Mankato State University.

It helped her gain “an awareness” that she used in her teaching, as well as “more patience.”

Skunes describes her main goal as a teacher in humorous terms — it is, she says, “to keep the students awake.”

In fact, one of the best compliments she ever received came from a student some years ago, Skunes says.

“Mrs. Skunes,” said the student, who she expects will chuckle, if he reads this article, “yours is the only class I never slept in.”

One technique she used in accomplishing her worthy objective — singing the quadratic formula. (She did that to illustrate during our interview.)

Sometimes, Skunes says, she’d hear her sophomores softly hum the formula in question, while writing it on the board.

“Any gimmick that would help them remember...,” says Skunes.

“I try not to lecture,” Skunes says, when asked about her teaching style. “I try to have the students at the board often, to get them involved.”

Skunes says she enjoys a good joke, and knows that the kids do too, so she tries to “have a laugh with them, once in a while.”

Looking back, says Skunes, “it’s easy” to say what she has liked the best about her teaching job — “it’s the students and the terrific staff.”

“And I’ve seen a lot of them come and go,” she adds, in an indirect reference to the length of her career. “Of the teachers that were here when I started, only three are still left.”

Skunes has taught some second-generation students.

“Sometimes, the family resemblance is so strong,” she laughs, “I have to be careful not to call them by their mother’s or father’s name.”

Over the span of her career, the students have grown “more worldly,” Skunes observed. More of them have cars; more of them work; and their lives have changed especially with the advent of the Internet.

“They have to be aware of more things,” she says.

Skunes has served as prom adviser, Math League coach, on the staff development committee (“when we didn’t have money for staff development”) and on the site management team.

She has held offices in the New Ulm Education Association (the teachers’ union), including those of president and negotiator.

She has served, and still does, on the Sunshine Committee that, among other things, organizes parties for retiring teachers.

The least likable part of her job is easy to pinpoint, as well — the paperwork.

“It’s not the most enjoyable part,” she says.

While looking forward to retirement, she is also nostalgic. Attending a faculty meeting this week, she thought, “that’s my last faculty meeting.”

It also feels strange not to participate in planning for next year. “It gives you a different outlook,” she says, “realizing how much effort is involved” in such planning.

In retirement, she is looking forward to traveling, “going somewhere warm” in her camper next winter, having people visit, biking, walking, swimming, and indulging in her hobbies of knitting, crocheting and especially playing cards.

She is also looking forward to, she says, to eating her lunch after 10:30 in the morning.

“I will miss the people — but not the regimen,” she adds.

Skunes says that if she had to do it all over again, she would, “without a doubt” again choose teaching for a career.

Why?

“That’s easy — bacause I like it,” she says. “There’s nothing else I’d rather do.”