With 25 years spent in the Columbia School District and 10 years before that teaching in Waterloo, Donna Weirschem stepped away from the classroom this spring having shown great love for her students and an immense passion for reading.

Weirschem has lived in Monroe County for about 33 years, but has always been fairly local. She grew up on a farm in Randolph County, attending St. Boniface Catholic School in Evansville and graduating from Sparta High School.

As she recalled, she was the first in her family to go to college. Having always had a fondness for school and an admiration for teachers, she began her higher education at John A. Logan College in Carterville before jumping to Southern Illinois University Edwardsville with a softball scholarship.

Weirschem said she started college focusing on her general studies, though she quickly declared her major as elementary education and, as she said, “there was no looking back.”

She explained that her studies and softball kept her very busy through college, and she was thus unable to complete her student teaching in the summer rather than in the spring.

Before she even completed her degree, Weirschem secured a teaching position at Ss. Peter & Paul Catholic School in Waterloo, a starting job of which she spoke very highly.

“I fell in love with Ss. Peter & Paul,” Weirschem said. “It was so big compared to the school that I went to, and it had everything, they had all the sports… It was my foundation, that’s for sure.”

Though she adored her time at SPPCS, she found herself jumping into public school education after a decade, and she suggested that the move was likely very beneficial for her kids as they were able to have plenty of room to themselves in school without their mother as their teacher.

Weirschem thus headed north to Columbia to start her career there as a second grade teacher at Parkview Elementary – a position she held for 15 years before moving to the first grade at Eagleview Elementary for 10 years.

She also served as a coach for a time during her career, though she largely focused on the education side of her work looking back on her time as a teacher.

“Definitely the teaching part was the most important part of my career and not the coaching part, but I did love both of them,” Weirschem said.

She spoke generally about her time in the Columbia school district, offering praise for the peers she worked alongside over the years saying, “I had great administrators. I had wonderful teachers to work with.”

As an elementary teacher, Weirschem spoke about being with her class all through the day. Though she taught all of their classes, her specialty and love always sat firmly with reading.

“You teach everything, but my love and my passion for teaching has always been reading,” Weirschem said. “It wasn’t the fact of teaching the reading class, but it was the time that I read to the kids. To me, that’s how you get kids to want to be life-long readers, not by the particular reading subject but making them fall in love with good books.”

Her passion for reading was demonstrated in a number of ways, but many of her former students are likely to remember Prairie Days, an event she did during her time in the second grade.

The idea started as a collaboration with another teacher during her time at SPPCS, though Weirschem brought it with her to Parkview.

Having read “Little House on the Prairie” to her students, she would have them come to school in period attire with a similarly historic packed lunch, and the students would get to experience a brief glimpse into history as they churned butter, played games and listened to music of the time.

“It was just a wonderful day to kind of teach them where their roots came from and what school would have been like a long time ago in a one-room schoolhouse,” Weirschem said. “That was a huge highlight of my career.”

For all the passion Weirschem brought to her reading education, she gave even more to her students in general.

As she looked back on her job, she described the love that she had for teaching and the importance she saw in building relationships with and caring for the kids in her class.

“To me, teaching was… those kids were my family,” Weirschem said. “And that’s the only way that you can be a good teacher. You’ve gotta love those kids. And I just loved every year getting a new group of kids and getting to know them and their families. If you don’t make a connection with a kid — and I don’t care what grade you teach, kindergarten up through high school — if you don’t make that personal connection to them, you’re gonna have a long year. I always took a lot of pride in that I took the time to get to know each of my kids and their families.”

Two of Weirschem’s coworkers also spoke about her work as a teacher in Columbia, with Joy Hall speaking to her experience working with Weirschem in her last 10 years in the district.

Hall spoke to the passion Weirschem brought to her job, noting how she took her tremendous interest in both reading and farming — she lives on a farm with her current family having grown up on a farm with her parents — and brought them into the classroom, with her interests being especially prevalent as she read “Little House on the Prairie” in second grade and “Charlotte’s Web” in first grade.

“She took her love of those things and it shined in her classroom with her students, teaching them to read, teaching them to learn to love to read,” Hall said.

She further emphasized the energy and effort Weirschem put into her teaching every day.

Nicole Marquardt of Eagleview also stressed the dedication and creativity Weirschem had for her job.

“She’s a phenomenal teacher,” Marquardt said. “The parents loved her, the kids loved her, her staff, we loved her. She was like a mom figure to me. Just a phenomenal teacher. I’m very sad to see her go, but very much a well-deserved retirement.”

As she enjoys her first summer of retirement, Weirschem said she will undoubtedly miss her job but is nevertheless pleased to step away after a long and enjoyable career.

Due for her eighth grandchild and eager to enjoy more time on the farm with her husband, her retirement will center largely around her family as she enjoys some more peace following a job that had her constantly running around.

Weirschem offered some advice for those teachers still early in their careers. On top of building relationships with students, she noted the importance of relying on coworkers and recognizing that you don’t have to come up with every great idea you incorporate into your classroom.

“The days are long but the years go by fast,” Weirschem said. “I can’t believe that my career is over. It feels just like yesterday that it started.”