Lynette Kolbecker: “You have a golden opportunity to just be the person you want to be with me.”

BY DANI TIETZ
dani@sjodaily.com

There’s a big world out there.

And Lynette Kohlbecker, a retiring Language Arts teacher at Heritage High School, wanted her students to savor it.

A Tuscola native, Kohlbecker went to Korea with her husband, Tim, for two years after she graduated from college. The couple then moved to upstate New York with their daughter before returning to Tuscola 12 years later.

Kohlbecker subbed here and there, wrote and edited for the local newspaper while she raised her young children. When her youngest was 3 years old, a part-time position as an English teacher opened up in the Heritage School District.

Now, 20-years later, Lynette Kolbecker, has mixed emotions about retiring.

“I loved every minute of it,” she said. “I’m going to miss (teaching), but I feel really good about (retirement). I feel really good about my experience here and the kids I’ve taught and affected.”

While Kolbecker was required to teach the classics, such as “The Great Gatsby” or “Romeo and Juliet”, she knew that the texts were just a catalyst for something more.

She utilized Socratic circles as a way for students to engage in a dialogue about a text, concept or idea so that they could gain a deeper understanding of what was before them.

And through the internet, she was able to introduce students to universal ideas and concepts as they watched TED Talks together.

These moments where community was built is what Lynette Kolbecker said students are most grateful for.

“The thing that they seem to like are those chances to voice their opinions,” she said. “They say they like to hear the other students’ opinions. They say they always think it’s so interesting that they didn’t know that person had that feeling.

“It brings a certain connectedness.”

Through the opportunity to get to know each other on a personal level, students are able to leave their classmates with meaningful messages when Kolbecker gives them a booklet to offer a compliment to one another.

“It just gives them the opportunity to hear things kids like to hear, but (their peers) might not say to their face,” she said,

Lynette Kolbecker took the idea from an Ann Landers story about a piece of paper that was found in a man’s wallet after he had died. Earlier in his life, friends had written down compliments about his character, and he cherished the piece of paper.

“You just never know,” Kolbecker said.

Part of the beauty of being at Heritage was connecting with students one-on-one with small class sizes.

By sticking to the standards mandated by the state, Kolbecker thought outside of the box, giving students the opportunity to do more than just read from a book.

As juniors, Heritage Language Arts students were required to develop a family tree.

“I try to teach them about getting back to your roots and understanding where you come from,” she said. “You are where you came from. There are people before you.”

The project required students to interview their elders and to find out more about the struggles family members endured.

This year’s seniors asked Lynette Kolbecker to consider a different approach to their hero unit: instead of reading, they wanted her to allow them to take a more hands-on approach.

“They are telling me; I needed to listen,” she said. “I changed my whole three-week project to ‘Everyday Heroes.’ ”

The group listened to a TED Talk about heroes that are sitting right next to you.

“There are heroes amongst us all the time,” she said.

Eighty-percent of the students brought in their teacher, youth leader or loved one for the presentation.

A stoic boy, who never lets out his emotions, thanked his grandpa for taking him in and raising him.

“There were so many tears,” she said.

“They really thought about the impact certain people made in their life.

“We’re always looking for somebody else to be our hero when they are sitting right next to you.”

Kolbecker said part of being an effective teacher is adapting to the crowd.

“You’re always thinking curriculum, curriculum: powerpoint, media, common core, writing letters, contacting people,” she said. “How can I use all that and do something different? And you can.”

Moving from a classroom where desks were in rows and the teacher was in front of the classroom to a set-up where all the desks, including the teacher, were in a circle was one solution to a problem where students could not engage with each other and the teacher was in “power.”

“It’s supposed to be student-led and student-engagement, what better way than to have everybody in the front row?” Kolbecker said.

“You know when a kid is fading and not paying attention.

“With the Socratic circles and TED Talks, they can always look at each other while they are talking.”

But being part of Kolbecker’s classroom isn’t just about students getting to know one another. She is also very intentional about making sure students know they have an opportunity to grow when they are with her.

“It’s important for them to know where they fit in this world and that they are worthy,” she said.

“When they come in their junior year I say, ‘Yes, I’ve heard stories about you. Yes, you have a past, but as soon as you walk into this room, how you treat me is how I’m going to react to you.

“You have a golden opportunity to just be the person you want to be with me.”

Lynette Kolbecker said it’s part of a lesson she learned when she wrote feature stories for the newspaper.

She was on assignment to write a story about a farmer, Harry Archer, who made baskets.

“He was a gruff old farmer with gnarly, huge hands, but they were poetry when he made his baskets. You never would think that those hands could create that.

“(Students) are the same way. I tell them, ‘I look at you and I know that there is poetry within you. There’s something great within you.’ ”

While Kolbecker is sad that she is leaving her teaching career, she is not looking back.

“I still love teaching. I love it. It’s going to be hard to give it up,” she said. “There’s nothing I don’t like about it.

“I’m not leaving sad or with any regrets. I’m leaving feeling like I’ve made a difference in some kids lives. But I’m looking forward to doing other things too, and that’s okay.”

In the beginning of retirement, she will follow the advice she was given.

“A wise man told me, ‘Don’t do anything the first year that you don’t want to do.’ I don’t want to fill a void just because there is a void there,” she said.

“I’m one of those people who live in the moment; it will come and evolve. I don’t want to force the evolution. And if I force it, it will just be because I’ll be filling a void.”

Kolbecker knows that she will not return as a sub. She trusts the teacher taking over for her in the fall, and knows that the students will be in good hands.