VanSkyock will still teach (5/7/05)

Editor’s note: This is the fourth in a series highlighting eight Jay School Corporation employees with more than 30 years experience that plan to retire this year.

Although she is retiring, Judy VanSkyock doesn’t plan to be far from the career she has adored for 38 years.

Mrs. Van, as her students call her, will be retiring in June after 31 years as a second grade teacher at Pennville Elementary School and 38 years with the Jay School Corporation.

“I really love this school, and I really hate to leave ... I keep thinking ‘Do I really want to leave?’” VanSkyock said last week. “I look at (my students) now, and I think ‘Do I really want to do this?’ Because I really have enjoyed it. I really have.”

VanSkyock, a Portland resident, said she plans to be available to substitute teach.

“I have told (Pennville principal Larry Wilson) that I’d love to come back to volunteer and substitute.”

After the last day of school, she plans to spend more time with her family including her husband Larry, three children and their spouses and her two grandsons.

When school starts up this fall, she plans on helping her son and daughter-in-law by taking care of her grandsons, Logan, 5 and Laramie, 4. She will also make sure they get to their kindergarten and preschool classes.

“I just feel like I have so much opportunity to be with (her grandsons). This is going to work out great in that respect. But I know that I am really going to miss the kids and the staff (at Pennville). They are great, just like family,” VanSkyock said.

“I am just going to miss everything. I am really going to have to get used to the whole idea. I think it’s because when you have done something for so long, it’s hard to just drop it.”

A 1963 Portland High School graduate, she was the recipient of a $100 scholarship from The Portland Foundation.

“I thought that was really great. It almost paid all of my tuition (at Ball State University) and books. It was only $75 for a quarter (of college),” VanSkyock said, adding that she took one summer off before going back and getting her teaching degree.

“They needed teachers really bad back in the 1960s,” VanSkyock said. She later received her master’s degree from Ball State by attending classes during three summers.

She first taught second grade several years at Garfield Elementary School, currently the Jay School Corporation administration office, before that school closed. She then began teaching at Pennville.

“I love it. I’ve been really fortunate because I have been at a really small (school) with one class of each grade,” VanSkyock said. This year she has 19 boys and five girls in her class.

As the end of school nears and spring fever begins to take over her students’ minds, VanSkyock said that she tries to think of different things to motivate her students.

Currently, her students are very excited by the Accelerated Reader Program, which allows students to take computerized tests on books they have read.

“They get to pick their books, and they learn how to use the computer,” VanSkyock said. Teachers get a better understanding of how well their students are comprehending what they read with the scores their students get on the accelerated reader tests, she added.

“We can sit in here and read orally all day, but there is no way to challenge them any better than letting them take their (accelerated reader) test. It is so great,” she said.

Besides her students, VanSkyock is also constantly updating her knowledge of computers.

“I have learned so much about computers. Because I wasn’t brought up (with computers) ... When I first started, we didn’t even think about computers.” VanSkyock said.

She has taught hundreds of kids during her 38 years with Jay Schools and is constantly approached by former students asking her if she remembers who they are.

“One boy came back, and I know that I had him 10 years before (in the second grade),” she said, adding that he asked her if she remembered him. “I could remember who he was. They are so interested to see if they were important enough for you to remember. I want (my students and former students) to know that I really care about them, and I really want them to do well.”[[In-content Ad]]