Columbia Middle School recently said “so long” to a science teacher of over three decades who dedicated her career to supporting her peers and helping students find their own passion for the world around them.

Though she has long worked in Columbia, Teresa Fehrenz makes her home in Freeburg, where she’s lived nearly all her life.

She attended high school in Althoff before studying at McKendree University on a presidential scholarship, majoring in biology.

Fehrenz recalled there was something of a shortage in teaching jobs at the time she graduated, though she was able to find an assistantship position at Saint Louis University, where she taught the lab portion of biology classes for a year.

Her career then took her to Grant Middle School in Fairview Heights, and though her sights were originally set on teaching high school, she found teaching younger students suited her very well.

“People say, ‘How can you teach middle school?’ and I’m like, ‘It’s just where you find where you fit.’ Everything is different, and I think you can really make such a difference and an impact with students at any age, but really I just felt like that’s where I connected with them,” Fehrenz said.

While working at Grant, Fehrenz was quite interested in teaching in the Columbia school district, and she soon got the opportunity to do so as she found a job opening in 1993.

“I was living in Waterloo for that first year where I was teaching at Grant, and I would drive by Columbia High School every day and think, ‘That’s where I wanna work! This is where I wanna work! This is where I wanna be!’” Fehrenz said.

She recalled starting the same year as the devastating flood that hit Monroe County, beginning in Columbia in the original middle school building where Eagleview Elementary is now located, with a fire in 2003 causing such damage to her classroom that she simply couldn’t set foot inside.

Fehrenz also spoke briefly about where her interest in teaching came from, emphasizing the passion for education that’s been in her family for three generations now, starting with her grandmother, 105-year-old Marcella Klein of Paderborn.

“As a kid, I always felt like I really wanted to be a teacher,” Fehrenz said. “My grandma, she wanted to be a teacher, and it was 1933 when she was 13, and she had gotten this thing where she could go to a teaching college, but her parents just really couldn’t afford to let her go. She was the oldest of the kids, and all the rest were boys, and she had to help take care of things. My mom always really pushed for education. My mom went to a little school where there were two and sometimes three classes together – there were only three people at her grade level – and she felt she didn’t get as good of an education as she would have wanted to.”

She recalled playing with a Fisher-Price schoolhouse playset and being excited at learning how to spell the word “library.”

While she considered becoming either a lawyer or an architect, her eighth grade teacher Mrs. Wuest inspired her to really set her sights on education.

This was much to the benefit of Columbia, as Fehrenz has served Columbia Middle School well for over 30 years teaching many seventh grade students.

She spoke about a number of facets of her education career, such as her approach to working with special education students and how it was colored by one of her own children being on the autism spectrum.

Fehrenz also put in a great deal of effort outside of the classroom as she was involved in a number of special training sessions or did other such work as an educator.

She recalled being on the review committee for the state of Illinois as Next Generation Science Standards were being adopted in the late 2010s.

Fehrenz also spent three years as an area teacher leader for the state, trained alongside 40 other teachers to share what they’d learned about how to approach hands-on STEM education.

She was also involved in other workshops or attended various science-education events, attending an international biotech convention in Chicago, undergoing FDA training in Washington, D.C., and most recently, working with the Society for Science and the Public through a Department of Defense grant.

Within the classroom, Fehrenz explained she really viewed her lessons as a way for students to find their own interest in science – even if they weren’t going to go on to become scientists themselves.

“As a teacher, really I’m a facilitator,” Fehrenz said. “You’ve gotta let the students find their interests and build on those, show them how the science relates to that.”

She recalled one of her larger projects at CMS involving a glass hallway in the building that she would use as a kind of greenhouse, having her students research plants – two of their choice and one mystery plant – growing and recording data on them as they developed.

Overwhelmingly positive about her time as a teacher, the one gripe Fehrenz noted about her career was the tight budget she and her peers faced, though even this had its upsides in some ways.

She pointed to George Washington Carver as a personal inspiration, taking a note from him to repurpose and improvise materials for classroom work. Specifically, she recalled having students make domes for their plants out of clear fast-food cups.

With her teaching career coming to a close, Fehrenz said she’s looking forward to keeping herself occupied in retirement, either continuing to use her education experience or simply enjoying time with her family.

“Looking at subbing, and maybe I’ll talk to the Botanical Gardens about their education programs, working with them as a volunteer,” Fehrenz said. “But I’ve got my grandkids, still got my grandma, my mom, my own three kids.”

As Fehrenz looks back on her career, her friends and colleagues at CMS have done similarly, offering high praise for her work and support over the years.

CMS Spanish teacher Carleigh Ottwell spoke particularly fondly of Fehrenz as a mentor, remarking that, “She helped to shape me into the educator I am today.”

“Teresa is one of the kindest and most thoughtful people I have ever met,” Ottwell said. “She was my mentor when I started in 2007, and she was so helpful in navigating what it means to be a new teacher. She showed me the ropes about all the things you don’t think about – everything from making copies and clearing out the inevitable jams, ordering classroom supplies or even just getting a lunch from the cafeteria.”

Fehrenz continues to think highly of her district and her peers, recalling a speech she gave at a retirement dinner at the end of the year where she noted the strong sense of community within Columbia’s schools.

She also reiterated the passion she’s brought to her classroom all these years.

“It’s a great district. It felt like part of my family, and everybody from Eagleview to Parkview, the middle school to the high school, we’re all in the job together,” Fehrenz said. “It’s the future, our next generation, making a difference in the world. I just love working with the kids. I feel like that was my calling from God. My heart is in teaching.”