After 36 years, Novacinski graduates from first grade

contributed photo
Cheryl Novacinski sits by the entrance to her first-grade classroom, Room 213, at Kennedy Community School.

by Dennis Dalman

news@thenewsleaders.com

It took Cheryl Novacinski of St. Joseph 36 years to graduate finally – from first grade.

As a teacher, that is. She recently retired after teaching first grade students for more than three and a-half decades at Kennedy Elementary School, then at Kennedy Community School. And she’s been getting big bouquets of praise ever since from students, teachers, families, including some praises underlined with good humor. For example, two of her colleagues (school secretary Traci Haugen and principal Anna Willhite), presented her with a diploma, congratulating her for “graduating” – at long last – from first grade.

In her long career, Novacinski has taught the children and even some grandchildren of her first students two and three decades ago. Not a day goes by but what she doesn’t meet and greet her former students – at the Coborn’s food store, at the bank, at the church.

“It’s so good to see them all the time,” she said in an interview with the Newsleader. “One of my recent students was Brianna Orcutt. Well, her dad Joe and his sister Rachel were my students years ago. Children of the children I taught years ago. That helps me reconnect. Same as the town I grew up in.”

That very small town was Buhl, not far from Hibbing, where she was born, on Minnesota’s Iron Range. After high school, she earned a degree in elementary education and a licensure in early childhood development.

“I decided years ago to bring that small-town feeling of Buhl, Minn. (everybody knowing and caring about one another) to the classroom,” she said. “All those students are always with me – in my thoughts, in my heart. We shared our lives together and they were always beautiful little human beings.”

Through the years, Novacinski has “been through a lot” with families and students when tragedies would strike the St. Joseph area: the abduction of 11-year-old Jacob Wetterling, the murder of St. Joseph police officer Brian Klinefelter, the disappearance of St. John’s University student Josh Guimond – to name just three.

Novacinski remembers, as if it were just yesterday, the shock she felt after hearing about Jacob Wetterling. The next day at school, she and the other staff members decided they would not bring up the subject unless students asked them about it.

“The students were all a-buzz about it, so I gathered them on the carpet in front of me, and then I told them – gently – the facts.”

But as she did so, she started to sob. A little girl named Rachel Backes climbed onto her teacher’s lap and said sweetly, “It’s going to be OK.”

Novacinski said it’s a moment she will never forget: the Wetterling tragedy, her bursting into tears and the kindness and compassion of that sweet little girl.

Novacinski is a firm believer in the value of hands-on education with children talking to one another, playing games, using teamwork to learn and to accomplish things.

In her classroom, each morning the students would all greet one another, do verbal sharing, give highlights of their last weekend and then begin class games. They would stand in a circle and play a variety of games, such as “Pass the Hula Hoop.”

“Activities and games like that would show students we are all in this together, that it (life) is all about US, not me, me, me. When they’d leave my classroom, I always hoped they would develop a team mentality. I hope they touch people’s lives, that they do good and be happy as they move through life and make others happy, too.”

Novacinski not only loves to see her former students, she also plays “detective” at times, tracing down former students online or through a network of students who know where other students now live. She does that tracking because when her first-graders graduate from high school, she loves to give or send each one of them a surprise package as a graduation gift. The packages typically contain a personalized graduation card, early photos and art works those graduates created when they were first-graders in Novacinski’s classes.

“This year, I found everybody who graduated, and only one package was returned (undeliverable),” she said.

Many students have told her or written to her about how surprised and delighted they were to receive those packages.

Novacinski had no trouble tracking down two of her former students – her very own daughter and son. It was just a stroke of luck that daughter Moriah, now 31, happened to be assigned to her mother’s classroom. Some years later, when she was 39, Novacinski started suffering heart palpitations and feeling frequently fatigued. It was discovered she had been born with a hole in her heart, but she did not know that until the palpitations were a warning sign. It required open-heart surgery to repair the defect. Her son, Ethan, was a kindergartner at the time, and he was so stressed and worried about his mother after her surgery that he wanted to be by her side at all times – thus he became one of her first-graders when school started that year.

Both of her children went on to become Apollo High School students and graduates. Moriah is an emergency-room physician’s assistant for Methodist Hospital in Minneapolis. She was recently named to the Apollo High School’s Hall of Fame. She was a four-sport athlete at that school and still holds the school record for the mile run. Ethan, who recently graduated from St. John’s University for which he played basketball, worked at the Covid unit in St. Cloud Hospital. He is now a physician’s assistant in urgent care at CentraCare Plaza in St. Cloud.

Novacinski, who knows a thing or two about teaching and learning, has the highest praise for the excellent education her children and others received from Apollo.

Her husband, Grant, started as a sixth-grade teacher in Wadena Elementary School. When Cheryl was hired in St.  Joseph, they moved to the city’s Pleasant Acres neighborhood, and Grant did substitute teaching and coached basketball at Apollo. Later he was hired as a third-grade teacher at Sauk Rapids. He retired from teaching one year ago. He and Cheryl plan to do some traveling in their retirement, with a trip to southern California already planned.

“I loved raising my kids and teaching here,” she said. “I have nothing but good things to say about St. Joseph. And the people I’ve worked with have become lifelong friends.”

As a special gift at one of her retirement celebrations, a video was presented, taken of dozens of Novacinski’s colleagues and students commenting on their favorite memories of their teacher and their classroom activities. Some interviewed have long ago graduated from high school. All of the comments are brimming with happy memories, admiration and heartfelt love.

Now retired, Cheryl Novacinski, a born teacher, will forever be a teacher – especially to her grandsons, twins Arlo and Bergen, Moriah’s boys.  Grandma Cheryl, along with others, is eager and ready to provide both twins with tender loving care.