New MES teacher brings experience, adaptability
Staff writer
Jona Neufeld didn’t know there was a job opening when she inquired about a teaching position at Marion Elementary School this spring.
Darin Neufeld, Jona’s husband, had worked on engineering projects in Hillsboro, including the sewer treatment plant, for his engineering firm Evans, Bierly, Hutchinson, and Associates. Although the majority of his current contracts are in western Kansas, he is looking to open an office for EBH in the area.
Jona Neufeld knew she was moving. A fifth-grade teaching position at MES happened to open up at about the same time she was looking for a job.
“I took a leap of faith,” she said.
Neufeld has taught elementary school in three cities before Marion. She taught two years in Cheyenne, Wyo., while Darin was in the Air Force. She was the children’s program director for two years in Shreveport, La. Neufeld spent the past 12 years teaching in Goodland. She started with a fourth-grade class her first year and then taught sixth grade for the next 11. Over 16 years of teaching, she has taught grades one through six.
The fifth-grade teaching position was an ideal job for Neufeld because the situation is similar to her job in Goodland. She moved from one 3A-sized school to another and continues to teach upper-level students in elementary school.
She grew up in Manhattan, but Neufeld’s family is originally from Peabody. Both Jona and Darin have relatives — uncles, aunts, and cousins — in Hillsboro.
Although they have moved to a new town and need to make new friends, Neufeld said her family’s living arrangement in Marion has been beneficial to her three children: Tyler, eighth grade; Austin, fifth grade; and Megan, second grade. In Goodland, the Neufeld’s lived out in the country; they have lived in the city of Marion since July 1.
“They really enjoy having kids in the neighborhood,” Neufeld said. “They’re excited about getting back to school to see the friends they met over summer.”
Neufeld has already been back to school, getting familiar with MES before school starts today.
She is preparing to teach without some of the technology she used Goodland. Goodland received a technology grant soon after Neufeld arrived. Every student in her sixth-grade classroom had a laptop computer. Neufeld said she will continue to use technology, but that she will have to adjust to the available hardware.
“I wouldn’t want to teach without technology these days,” she said.
Neufeld said her strength as a teacher is her adaptability. She never uses the same lesson plan twice and said that she learns as much from students as they learn from her.
“They teach me things every day,” she said.
English teacher wants to reach students
“The whole point of high school is to give them a nice background in what you think is important,” Topher Rome said.
Rome’s first teaching job, after receiving his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Fort Hays State University, is teaching senior English, college composition 1 and 2, debate, and speech at Marion High School.
“I’ve never done anything quite as intense as teaching a whole senior class all the way through,” he said.
As a graduate assistant at FHSU, Rome taught English classes for freshmen and sophomores. Although he has that experience, Rome will have to teach students with a range of interests.
“The big fear I have is an assignment doesn’t go well or if the kids turn on a book,” Rome said.
To avoid that problem, Rome is teaching works which he is enthusiastic. The two novels he is going to teach in his senior class are “The Hobbit” and “Brave New World;” he included both in a list of his favorite works.
“Anytime you get to teach the ‘Hobbit’ you’re going to have a good year,” he said. “It’s a great work, but not really hard to read, which is nice after Beowulf and Chaucer.”
He also understands there are some works students may not like.
“I’m like the only person that loves ‘Beowulf.’ I read it for fun. I wrote a comic play based on it,” he said. “This is just too important to pass up. It might be the last time that kids have the opportunity to read something like Beowulf.”
Rome is also going to concentrate on writing in all of his classes. He said he is going to balance writing assignments, especially in his senior English class, to include essays, but also professional writing like resumes.
“These kids will have to write all the time,” Rome said of what his students will face after high school.
In all his classes, Rome will try to be fair but tough.
“You want an assignment that’s fair for everybody,” he said. “If it doesn’t work, you have to go back and create a new one so it’s fair to everyone.”
Rome is anxious to start teaching. He said that he was attracted to the job in Marion because he could teach more students in more classes. Rome grew up in Ellinwood and prefers small school districts.
The single man also enjoys some of Marion’s features.
“It’s nice not paying $900 in rent a month,” he said. “I don’t have a 45-minute commute.”
CHS science teacher
Staff writer
Kara Luce is the only new teacher at Centre High School this year. She will be teaching physics, chemistry, earth science, and an eighth grade study skills class.
She hopes to introduce into the Centre district a couple of new things she was involved in during her previous six-and-a-half years of teaching.
She would like to start a Science Olympiad, in which students compete in various science projects. She also would like to establish a Science Bowl.
She said she took science bowl teams to national contests in three of her four years of teaching at Lodi, Calif. The National Science Bowl is sponsored by the U.S. Dept. of Energy and is held in Washington, D.C. It provides contacts with high-level government officials and scientists.
Luce grew up in Hillsboro as Kara Richert and graduated from Tabor College in 2001 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in chemistry.
Instead of going to medical school, as she originally planned, she decided to become a teacher. She received her teaching credentials after a year at Simpson University in Redding, Calif.
While at Simpson, she received the “student teacher of the year” award.
She was married to Christopher Luce in 2004, and both were employed in the Lodi school district in Lodi, Calif., for four years. The district had an enrollment of 33,000 students.
In 2008, Luce received the district’s “new teacher of the year” award.
The couple moved to Kansas and settled in Hillsboro in 2009. Kara Luce taught in Augusta the past school year.
She said she took the job at Centre to be closer to home. She has become acquainted with a few of the other teachers.
“I think it will be a good place,” she said. “I don’t like moving around.”
Luce gets up early every morning to train for a run in an upcoming marathon for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. The couple lost a son to a rare blood disease almost five years ago, when he was two months old.
Luce enjoys digital scrapbooking and assists her husband with his computer business, Rocket Tech. She teaches clients basic computer skills.