ThankTeachersYou,

Teacher: Margo Cartwright

Mrs. Cartwright, You are the best teacher. You are very nice. I am glad I am your student. Thank you for being my teacher.

Love, Wyatt Quanstrom

Teacher: Alex Binek

Wyatt Quanstrom

Thank you to him because he has really helped me develop a passion for playing the trombone a passion I hope to keep up for a while. So thanks to him he has really changed my life.

Lily Switzer-Bowers

Teacher: Miss Highland Wiseman

Although it’s been 66 years since she was my English teacher in Depue, I want to thank Miss Wiseman for insisting that my spoken English be as good as my written English: if you can count it, use “number,” not “amount;” subject and verb must agree; there, their, and they’re are not interchangeable. My subconscious mind still keeps all that straight without conscious thought. Also, you taught us not use a knife on something that can be cut with a fork!

Norma Hedges

Teacher: Debbie Rossler

Thank you for all you do! It’s so comforting knowing you truly care about your students and do so much to help them! I know you are one of the best parts of my daughters day as I am sure the rest of your students.

Maya Bantista

Teacher: Brandy Jacobs

Thank you for always being positive, positive attitude even on your down days, positive influence, positive support, always being there when we need someone to talk to or vent to or need help anything school or home related. Thank you for always being there

Oliver Stabler

Teacher: Stacy Harper

Thank you for making first grade so much fun. Thank you for your patience, support and showing us kindness. Every day you show us how to be better humans and we can always count on you to lead us when we lose our way. You have taught us so much this year and we will forever cherish the memories we made in your classroom. I think I speak for everyone when we say that a thank you doesn’t do enough justice, but THANK YOU!

John McConnell

Teacher: Angie Thompson

Thank you for all you have do! You go above and beyond the call of duty when it comes to your students. Your patience and love for them is top tier! We’re so thankful for you!

Kristina Cain

Teacher: Heidi Anderson

Heidi, thank you for being a ray of sunshine to every kid you meet!

Mia Jacobs

Teacher: Amanda Fischer

Mrs. Fischer is always very polite and friendly. She is a one in a million teachers because of her attitude towards her students, she adores all of her students and treats all of them as one of her children.

Stephan Marcum

Teacher: Ms.Conner

Thank you for being an awesome teacher this year and the last year because so far you have been the nicest teacher I have had.

Armany Delatorre

Continued from page 7 just like Sister Mary Andrene,’” Quick said. “If I could do what she does for us every day, I think I’d be happy for the rest of my life.

“Well, here I am still,” Quick said. “So I guess it was the right choice.”

Sammi Sarosinski, of Oglesby, certainly thinks so. Sarosinski thought highly enough of Quick to approach her about serving as her daughter’s Confirmation sponsor, which Quick was happy to do.

“She was definitely one of my favorite teachers,” Sarosinski said. “I’ve had great teachers and you know they care, but with Lynn you know she individually cares about every single person in her class.”

Quick may have been influenced by a nun, but she said she never sensed a vocation to be a nun. That isn’t to say the Felicians didn’t try talking her into it. When Quick was 6, one of the nuns herded all the first-graders – “God bless her, there were 41 of us” – onto a bus to Chicago for a discernment weekend to see if any of the kids had a calling.

That was Quick’s first time in Chicago and she loved every minute; but she never felt a summons then or in the sixth grade when she attended another discernment event.

(Instead, she had a vocation to marriage. Bill Quick was a fellow Oglesby native but they met on a Florida beach when a wave literally pushed her into her future husband. They have been married 33 years and have two grown children.)

Quick would finish her education outside the Catholic school system.

“I had very faithful parents,” said Quick, who was happy attending La Salle-Peru High School, “so it’s not as though she couldn’t teach me the things I’d be missing (at public school).”

After studying at Illinois Valley Community College and completing a bachelor’s degree at Northern Illinois University, she accepted a teaching position at Holy Family in the 1980-81 school year.

The nuns had first choice on which classes to teach, which relegated Quick to seventh grade. Quick took an instant liking to junior high students and was doubly pleased to get Sister Mary Andrene’s old classroom. One day Mary Andrene, now Mother Superior, walked in and immediately recognized the

How to submit

young woman at the blackboard.

“This is so familiar,” the nun marveled.

“I’m here because of you,” Quick replied. She said now, “It really was the greatest reunion.”

A nun at Holy Family soon became a rare sighting. As the professed sisters aged and retired, they were called back to the big-city convents.

“And then, eventually, there just weren’t any available and now we are all lay teachers,” Quick said.

Quick bounced back and forth between seventh and eighth grades, which suited her well. She’d never felt drawn into elementary or secondary education and felt a strong connection to the pre-teens.

“They are looking for answers about so many things,” Quick said. “They are very interested in who they are becoming, they’re very interested in their faith and they’re very interested in why they’re here.

“And it’s so important that there’s somebody who can address that for them.”

Her principal certainly is pleased. Jyll Jasiek said not only is Quick a skilled educator but also she’s a woman of faith who lives out her creed.

“She captures their attention not only with her teaching style but also her life stories,” Jasiek said. “Lynn lives her life and teaches through her faith every day.”

Quick in no way disavows that.

“I truly believe that if people are meant to be teachers, they are also meant to have a niche – a place in the educational framework that’s their comfort zone and where they contribute the most,” she said. “This is my niche.”

Although she’s closing in on retirement age, Quick has no immediate plans to call it a career.

“I know I’m coming back next year, and still very excited about coming back next year. And then? We’ll see.”