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| Pat Bries, fifth grade teacher at St. Joseph School in Fort Atkinson, hands out Turkish Delights to some of her students. Bries is retiring after 42 years at the school. (Catholic Herald photo/Kevin Wondrash) |
FORT ATKINSON — As Pat Bries completed her fourth, and final, decade teaching fifth graders — bringing the total to more than 600 — her classroom displayed her career, both the past and the present.
A Smartboard has long replaced the chalkboard, but signs with the cursive alphabet still adorned the classroom.
Bries said the handwriting style is still needed in the real world, “I don’t think it’s on the way out yet.”
Her desk displayed small school pictures of every student she taught since the school started having the photos taken more than 20 years ago, while her current students listened to her read to them from an eBook reader.
The book was Long Way from Chicago by Richard Peck, a book she has read to all of her classes toward the end of the school year.
Bries reads it because one of the book’s main characters has a “strong sense of right and wrong” and her soon-to-be-departing fifth graders are “going into middle school now and they realize that life is not all black and white — there are a lot of shades of gray.”
Despite the school year and a teaching career of 42 years coming to an end, it was just a normal day in Pat Bries’ classroom located at the end of the hallway at St. Joseph School in Fort Atkinson.