Goodbye, Mrs. Kraft: Southwest Teacher Retires After 42 Wonderful Years

After 42 wonderful years, Dist. 124 teacher Audrey Kraft is retiring. Photos by Claudia Parker.

When Audrey Kraft says goodbye to her second-grade students this week, she’ll also be saying goodbye to 42 years of teaching.

This Tuesday, May 31, will be the teacher’s last day of school at Southwest Elementary School in Evergreen Park, where has taught two generations of students. Although she’ll be returning to Southwest the next day for a final wrap with her colleagues, Tuesday will be the last day of her long career with students.

“It’s bittersweet,” Kraft said. “I’m going to enjoy not having the daily routine of teaching, but I will miss learning new things and the people I’ve work with, some for over 30 years.”

Kraft knew she wanted to be a teacher while attending Evergreen Park Community High School.

“I’ve always had a love for children,” she said. “I did a lot of babysitting."

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She remembers the large baby boomer bumper crop of young children in the 1950s and 1960s, when in first grade she had to be bused across town to Southeast Elementary School -- the only time that Evergreen Park ever offered school bus service.

“There were too many first graders and Northwest hadn’t been built yet,” she laughed. “Except for first grade I went to Central, which was then a K through 8 school.”

Kraft was a fresh-faced Elmhurst College graduate when Dist. 124 hired her as a teacher’s aide at Northwest Elementary School in the fall of 1974. After deciding she liked teaching, she went to earn her master's degree in education from Chicago State University.

When a full-time teaching position opened up at Southwest the next year, she was hired to teach sixth graders, now adults in their 50s, for the 1975-76 school year.

“My first year with the district as a paraprofessional was spent with kindergarten through second grade.” she said. “At Southwest I taught fifth and sixth graders, and I spent quite a while teaching first grade and then second grade I’ve spent 42 years with the district, and 41 years in the same building.”

After working a wide variety of jobs during her summers’ off, including one summer at the now defunct Weiboldt’s store and another sending out Evergreen residents’ water bills, the one thing those jobs taught her is that being a teacher is never boring.

“Every day is new,” Kraft said. “You have to learn something new all the time and a lot of that time you’re learning along with the students, especially with today’s technology. You just keep learning.”

She’s watched the pendulum swing in a variety of experimental teaching methods in a career that has straddled two centuries.

“Teaching is different from when I started out because society has changed,” she said.”Open units were big in the 1970s and 1980s. We had classes outdoors and more than one grade level in a big open classroom. Then someone decided the walls were going back up because there was too much walking around and kids were getting distracted.”

As a teacher in the 21st century, she’s learned to ask her students for help with classroom technology.

“Technology has played a more important part in their lives,” Kraft said. “They will teach the teachers. They know how to fix things.”

She’s had great classes and some that were challenging. Every year is new and a fresh start, a rare commodity is most other jobs and professions.

“A good class is a group of students that work well together,” Kraft said.”This has been a great year for me because I have a fantastic group of students. They’re funny and they respect each other’s differences. Plus they have very supportive parents who make sure their children turn in their homework and are prepared for class.”

Kraft doesn’t plan to be idle during her retirement years. She's helping her son, Brendon, prepare for a wedding in November. She and husband, Tim, are also working on their house.

She doesn’t know what will happen on her last last day of school as a teacher Her students and paraprofessional have already surprised her with a gift: a framed heart comprised of all her second graders’ hand prints.

“I have a feeling I’ll have some tears,” Kraft said. “It hits me in spurts.”

Mrs. Kraft's retirement tribute. Video by Claudia Parker, Dist. 124