Dettras retire after over 60 years combined teaching

By Alberta Stojkovic -

Two themes come up when stu­dents and par­ents rem­i­nisce about their expe­ri­ence with the Det­tra teach­ing team. The first thing peo­ple men­tion is how Pete and Rhonda Det­tra are very “hands on” in their teach­ing meth­ods. The sec­ond thing they say is that they really care about the kids they teach.

After 31 and 32 years teach­ing in fifth and sixth grade, this is the first year the Det­tras won’t be return­ing to the fifth and sixth grade class­room. For­mer stu­dents, friends and fel­low teach­ers cel­e­brated their years at Mount Gilead and Edi­son with a party at Edi­son School last week. There were many laughs, hugs and tears as friends wished them well in retirement.

Ash­ley Auld, who now teaches agri­cul­ture at Elgin High School, said that the “hands on” approach is the first thing that stands out in her mind when she thinks of the Dettras.

“Every con­cept we learned was ‘hands on’. There were lots of exper­i­ments and projects. We had a medieval fair for his­tory and lan­guage. We built rock­ets. We swung cups of water in the air to learn about cen­trifu­gal force. We learned chess,” recalled Auld. “There was some tra­di­tional teach­ing of math and spelling, but it’s the “hands on” that I remem­ber most.”

Auld went on to say that they never iden­ti­fied group learn­ing lev­els, but chal­lenged each indi­vid­ual at their own level. Group­ings changed every few weeks so that stu­dents weren’t iden­ti­fied at any par­tic­u­lar level. She believes that is how they built con­fi­dence in stu­dents. It rein­forced learn­ing and allowed stu­dents to have freedom.

“As a teacher myself I really appre­ci­ate the con­cept of “hands on” and use it all the time in my class­room,” Auld added.

Ash­ley (Pleiman) Twedt also remem­bers the Det­tras “hands on” teach­ing. She espe­cially enjoyed the project where they had their own busi­ness and made and kept check­books. It involved math and busi­ness as well as the prac­ti­cal use of a checkbook.

Twedt said she uses the “”hands on approach with her ele­men­tary stu­dents in Bel­lville. She teaches as an inter­ven­tion spe­cial­ist and knows the impor­tance of work­ing closely with each indi­vid­ual at their own level.

Par­ent and Mount Gilead Ele­men­tary Art Teacher, Robin Conrad’s two older boys had Det­tras. Con­rad was very appre­cia­tive of Det­tras work with Des­ti­na­tion Imag­i­na­tion, which went to the state com­ple­tion this year.

Con­rad was espe­cially touched at the Det­tras car­ing. A fourth grade girl con­fided in Con­rad that she was afraid to go to Dettra’s class because ‘that’s where all the smart kids went.’ Con­rad said she talked to the girl later that fall and she said, ‘you won’t believe it — I’m so smart!’

“The Det­tras built children’s con­fi­dence,” Con­rad said. “That is their spe­cial ability.”

Erin Kelty worked with Rhonda for four years as a Kiwa­nis “K Kids” advi­sor. Kelty said she has never seen a teacher get so involved and care so much about kids as Rhonda does. She said she saw both Pete and Rhonda go ‘way above and beyond’ the duties usu­ally required by teachers.

“But car­ing could also mean dis­ci­pline, fol­low­ing instruc­tions and learn­ing,” Kelty said. “I saw Pete get very con­cerned with kids some­times and he made sure they toed the line.”

Kelty recalled how Rhonda worked very hard to make sure chil­dren under­stood the K Kids pro­gram. She took the time to dis­cuss val­ues one on one if that was needed. When she found some­one doing some­thing dis­hon­est, she would pull kids aside and talk with them.

“They always had fun in class too. That is some­thing they always seemed to man­age to do along with their teach­ing,” said Kelty with a smile. “They are amaz­ing and they will be missed.”

Posted by Taylor Kaser on Aug 22 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.