By DEB BENTLY
Staff Writer
Teri Kormann’s last day as “the place to start” at NRHEG Secondary School was Wednesday, June 5. Since 2012, Kormann has been the face at the office service window where people would come with questions, drop off forms, or simply stop by in search of a sympathetic ear.
“If they didn’t know where else to go, this was the place to start,” observes Kormann. “If I couldn’t help them, I would find the person who could.”
Kormann’s history with the school actually begins with her second-grade year, when her family moved to the area. She graduated from New Richland-Hartland High School in 1977. Also graduating that year was classmate and sweetheart Lonnie Kormann; the two married in 1978 and moved away for a time, but returned as they began having children. Their three sons are all NRHEG alumni: Bryan graduated in 2004, Justin in 2007 and Jonathan in 2009.
Kormann had been a stay-at-home mom, but when her youngest began attending kindergarten, she learned the school was looking for help supervising the playground. She volunteered on the days Jonathan was in school. “They needed help, I lived close by. It seemed like a good fit,” she recalls, saying she enjoyed playing kickball and watching kids entertain themselves on the playground equipment.
The next year she joined the staff as a paraprofessional, someone who attends class with students who have special needs and also works one-on-one with them to help them study and learn. She remembers being one of six paras working under teachers Beth Knudson and Stacy Stork, and all of them based out of a single classroom. The close quarters and the many demands of the job, she said, helped them become a tightly-knit group. “We all had each other’s backs,” she remembers. “Those ladies were definitely my work ‘family.’”
In 2012 when the position for the administrative assistant to the principal became open, Kormann applied. “Paul Cyr took a chance on me; I will be forever grateful,” she says of that first year. “I absolutely loved working in the office and with Paul,” she recalls.
Kormann has been in the office ever since.
“I have absolutely loved this job,” Kormann says. She mentions the variety of duties the job entails–everything from attendance and lunch count to working closely with the sports programs. But mostly, “It’s the people.”
“I will miss the entire, wonderful staff,” she says. “It takes very special people to want to work with kids every day.”
Among the things she will not miss, she mentions, are having to be at school by 7 a.m., even when there was a snowstorm. She is deeply grateful the pandemic is over, and of course hopes there will not be another. “Those years were awful for everybody,” she remembers. “For the teachers, the parents, and most of all, the students.”
Kormann takes special pleasure in having been able to be there and help in sometimes subtle ways. Thanks to her position, first as a paraprofessional and then in the office, she holds a warm place in her heart for the members of the class of 2018, whose company she kept from the time they were kindergarteners until their graduation.
She says she always enjoyed the fun and variety of dress-up days and special events such as homecoming, snow week and prom.
She will always remember some of the traditions that popped up across the year–for example when military recruiters would come to the school, they would challenge students to do pull-ups in the hallway next to the cafeteria.
She says she has been continually grateful for the community’s engagement with the school–attendance at games, concerts and performances. During years when the wrestling team and the girls’ basketball team went to state, she remembers the school needed six or seven buses for all the people interested in being there.
Her favorite day of the year “was always the first day of school,” she says emphatically. “I loved the fresh energy, the excitement, the anticipation, the new students moving wide-eyed from place to place.
“Everybody’s in a good mood,” she says, smiling.
Her second-most favorite has been the last day of school when, yet again, the mood is positive and the air is filled with anticipation–this time for the summer ahead.
Of NRHEG’s students, Kormann says, “Most of them have woven themselves right into my heart.” She tells the story of being at a post-season basketball game taking place in another community. “There was a gentleman supporting the opposing team sitting kitty-corner behind us,” she recalls. “He asked whether one of the kids on the floor was mine.
“I told him they all were, and I meant it.”
In fact, seeing the students every day is what she says she will miss most. “It was such a privilege to watch them grow, mature, and learn,” she says. “It will be hard not being a part of that anymore.”
She says she hopes she is remembered as having been a good listener, someone to rely on, and a calming influence. “I didn’t want to be the scary office lady,” she jokes. “I wanted kids to always know they could trust me.”
Kormann has already spent a few days mentoring Nikki Cromwell, who has been hired to be next year’s administrative assistant to the principal. She also expects to be in the school a few days next fall as Cromwell continues to learn the ropes.
Now that she has retired, Kormann says the plan is to take life a bit easier, including sleeping past 4:50 a.m. She and husband Lonnie plan to do some traveling and to spend more time with their grandchildren, Emma, 11; Owen, 5; Brooklyn, 3; and Jayce, 20 months.
“I want to read more books, take more walks, watch the birds, and putz in my yard,” she says. “Now I will have time to do it.”