Teacher of the Month: Kari Calcagno

There was never a question of what Kari Calcagno wanted to do in her professional life. 

“I loved babysitting,” Calcagno said. “I started in junior high. I used to work for lady that was a mail carrier. She’d have to leave at like five o’clock in the morning; I go over, I’d wake up the baby just so I could hold him and squeeze on him.”

Those little chubby cheeks led her to first believe that she wanted to work in childcare or daycare, but after some time at Wee Willie Winkie, she knew that runny noses weren’t for her.

But being in the classroom was. 

Right out of college, Calcagno began her career in Deland Weldon.

“Tony and I couldn’t even go on a honeymoon because we got married on the 17th and I started on the 21st,” she said.

Her first assignment was a class of 16 first-grade students.

The second year she switched with the second-grade teacher who just the year before mentored her. Calcagno was able to stay in that position for two years.

“We had an indoor pool so the kids did two weeks of swim lessons in school, and they would come back exhausted,” she said. You would send little Jimmy down to the office and he would come back with a wad of bubblegum. It was homemade vegetable soup at lunch and biscuits. Everyone just took care of each other, so it was a very unique situation.”

Class sizes grew for a couple years, but then residents of Deland Weldon began to move their families to more residential areas. Calcagno knew it was time to sub for a couple years while she bonded with her newborn.

With the teaching degree, Calcagno was able to become a long-term sub at Lincoln Trail Elementary where she helped for four months in the room she teaches in now. 

“They had this rambunctious group of boys in there,” she remembers. “They were like,if you can straighten these kids out, I’ve got a teaching job for you next year. So that was a challenge for me.”

But Calcagno rose to the challenge, making great gains for the students through an interactive, hands-on classroom. 

The ironic thing is that one of the boys in that class also had a son in Calcagno’s classroom. She said she’s been blessed to see children become parents who trust her with their children.

“That’s what you get from being in a smaller school district,” she said.

In her 31st year as a fifth-grade teacher (35th year overall), Calcagno knows the impact older teachers can have on the younger ones. She remembers the fifth-grade staff taking her under their wing in the 1990s. 

She hopes that teachers, like her daughter Maddie, who teaches in Fisher, will see that she’s always tried to keep her presentations “fresh.” 

This year, she’s doing a picture book a day to talk to students about grit, empathy, self-control, integrity, or to embrace diversity.

“I don’t even know the last time I kept a plan book,” she said. I just start over.”

Calcagno enjoys spending the evening on the phone with Maddie, sorting through all of the days’ happenings and bouncing ideas off each other. 

“Sometimes she lectures me, and I’m like, wait a minute..” Calcagno said. “But I love it.”

Calcagno never dreamed of having to work through a global pandemic that drastically changed the way students and teachers interacted with each other. Like all teachers, she worked to offer the best remote learning environment that she could.

Then as January came, her last semester as a salaried teacher, Calcagno was happy to see her students back in the classroom. 

“ It was like a new day of school because I had to mix my classes: the morning didn’t know the afternoon,” she said. “It was pretty quiet the first semester, but it was really fascinating to see how they meshed.

“This week we could actually play on the playground equipment,” she said. “(One of my students) said it’s like the first day of school: we can do the bars and the swings and the rock wall. They have not played on that equipment. So that’s been awesome.”

But like every class in the last 35 years, Calcagno wants students to know that they are family, that they should learn responsibility, and that learning is an exciting process. 

“I want them to become independent learners,” she said. “And my biggest pet peeve is to advocate for themselves if they have a question they don’t understand. They have to seek that out.”

Decades after leaving Calcagno’s classroom, former students often remember initiatives like Hands Around the World, which Calcagno started with former Lincoln Trail Teacher Pat Porter. 

Calcagno also started the annual fifth-grade electric fair. And she loves watching students interview professionals in a career they are interested in, and showcasing their dreams in the career fashion show. 

It is traditions like this that Calcagno hopes the Lincoln Trail staff will continue to carry on after her retirement in May 2021.

Although she said that she plans to continue to sub in the Mahomet-Seymour School District, Calcagno is also excited about filling her retirement bucket list of visiting every Big 10 football stadium, and to see the Cubs play in Florida and California, where her daughter Allie is. Tony will also retire at the same time as his wife.

They plan on continuing to build the life that they love in Mahomet. Calcagno said they will most likely spend at least one day a week with their grandson. 

Calcagno knows that some things will change, but others may not. 

“Tony won’t even won’t even let me go to the grocery store without a time limit,” she said. 

“‘You have 10 minutes because I know you’re gonna see someone that you know.’ But I love it. They come up to me and they’re in these big bodies, now are they’re adults. I still remember their name. I love that feeling.”