Mary Niedrach – A teacher for life
Retiring educator says it’s always been much more than just a job
For 40 years, Mary Niedrach has had numerous titles: A doctor, a therapist, a jokester and a tooth fairy. But these titles all fall under that which is the most important of all, a teacher.
It is what she has always been. It is what she was at 13, hosting a summer camp on the back porch of her home and making crafts and leading songs with children. It is what she was in Athens as a recent graduate, teaching while her husband finished law school. And it is what she has been at Berry College Elementary for the last 25 years, teaching kindergarten in the same classroom where she was taught.
So when she retires at the end of this school year, she is walking away from something which has always been elevated far beyond profession.
“It was so hard for me to say that,” Niedrach said. “I feel sad to be leaving a job that has been my life.”
Because this job of hers has never felt like it actually was one. It just feels like fun, she said.
Niedrach can look back at each of the class photos she has saved and recall each name and the moments she shared with them. Because each child she loved as a mother would, she said.
As Niedrach puts it, school is for boundless exploration, not the minutiae of curriculum. The job of a teacher is to crack open the door to the world for budding minds, she said. And she has gone along with that ride — that everyday miracle, she said — for four decades.
In Niedrach’s class, there is a field trip every week to match the theme of a letter of the alphabet. “A” is for airplane, which her students are taken up on with the help of Earl Tillman’s pilot buddies, she said. When the kids get out, there she is writing down all they say, the questions they ask and the observations they make. Her class visits a grocery store, a hospital, a newspaper office and a quarry — all to exhibit the world at work and the opportunities beyond their hometown.
“Everybody has something they need to do in this life,” she said. And you cannot make kids into something they are not. The job is to guide them to finding their gift.
Niedrach never lets them say “no,” she said. Try everything at least once, she tells them, whether it’s sushi or ziplining.
“Learn, go and do,” she says to them. “Look outward instead of inward.”
When she sees her students, she projects what they will be as adults. She knows how they think and how they learn. She has sat through nearly every single Disney movie and known of each new toy.
All to better understand them and reach them on their level, building trust. For over 20 years, when “W” week rolls around, Niedrach has put on the Kindergarten Wedding — a celebration of friendship. And during each of those events over the decades, she will ask her kids what is the most important thing they learn in kindergarten.
“To love one another,” they will shout out.
“It’s the most important thing in life,” she said.
The awards Niedrach receives come every year. They are not plaques or certificates. They are small, folded pieces of paper announcing graduations and weddings of former students. Or furthermore, they are a daisy crown and a leather shoe string taken off a child’s shoe with a sign proclaiming “Best” attached.