Generations of Students Bid Farewell to Carolyn Wieringa

Jesse Hilgers, 42, still vividly remembers participating in an Oregon Trail simulation when he was a student in Carolyn Wieringa’s class at West Glacier Elementary School.

Now a police officer in Seattle who splits his time between the big city and Montana, Hilgers recalls the math calculations and maps students used during the simulation as they made considerations about how best to ensure their survival and success on the trail. Students earned points in the simulation, he said, by maintaining weapons, keeping their animals alive, possessing different lands — the list goes on.

“I remember as a kid, it was very detail oriented to the point that I was looking up where previous colonies were to see where the good farmland was,” Hilgers said.

And this year, Hilgers has taken a trip down memory lane in many ways, as his son, Max, now a fifth grader, sits in the same classroom Hilgers once did himself — taking class with the same teacher.

“For me it’s cool going in there and she’s in the same classroom that I was in, the actual room itself, so it’s kind of a blast from the past when you go in there,” Hilgers said. “It feels surreal that so much time has passed.”

But this year marks a changing of the tide at West Glacier Elementary School as Wieringa, the teacher who has educated both Jesse and, now, Max Hilgers, steps away from the classroom and into retirement. Her departure from the school comes alongside two other teachers leaving at the year’s end, marking a higher amount of turnover than typical in the small, close-knit district. The teacher-lead team said they hired a replacement for Wieringa, but it would be difficult to fill the veteran educator’s shoes.

Wieringa, her colleagues, former students and current ones say, has made her mark after more than three decades of teaching at the school. Her fellow staff members describe her as a fountain of historical context and administrative knowledge — something that has been critical in the teacher-led district, where a team of educators share the duties that would typically fall to a principal or superintendent, from managing testing and reporting to the state’s Office of Public Instruction to shoveling snow or mowing the lawn.

And for the tight-knit West Glacier community right outside Glacier National Park’s west gates, Wieringa’s influence has shaped multiple generations’ worth of students. Hilgers described her as a teacher who held students accountable, teaching them lessons like personal responsibility and how to have a strong work ethic, which extended beyond the classroom doors. Her continuing presence at the school is part of the reason he opted to send his son Max there, instead of to the Columbia Falls school district, located 20 minutes down the road.

For Wieringa, the decision to step away boils down to a simple reason: it’s just time.

“I’ve been thinking about it for a while and I am just ready to relax and enjoy life, if that makes sense,” she said. “Not that I didn’t enjoy my job. I mean, I still really love working with the kids, but I also am just ready to, I guess, share my gifts with the world and mow the lawn and maybe… be able to do some things that I really enjoy.”

Wieringa comes from a family filled with teachers. Her father was a high school industrial arts teacher. Her mom took night courses to earn her teaching degree, eventually becoming a middle school librarian.

So, when Wieringa attended Montana State University on the search for a career “where [she] could do a variety of different things,” teaching became a natural fit. And when it came time to find a job, her brother — also a teacher — had just begun a position in Kalispell, which is how Wieringa first heard about West Glacier Elementary School.

“I got my degree and West Glacier was the first job that I got, and I ended up staying,” she said.  

She started off at the school in the 1990s, teaching kindergarten three days out of the week. She taught fifth and sixth grade science or spelling on other days. Eventually, as the school’s enrollment evened out, Wieringa specialized on teaching fifth and sixth graders, where she remains today. Her coworkers say she excels at helping students prepare for the transition to junior high. Most of West Glacier Elementary School’s students matriculate to Columbia Falls after their time in the small district. Wieringa, her colleagues say, doesn’t shy away from conversations with her students about their choices in the future, and how those choices may affect their lives.

Over the more than three decades Wieringa has spent at West Glacier Elementary School, she’s been part of helping the school develop a partnership with Glacier National Park. Park rangers come into the classroom on a regular basis, and students have opportunities to travel into the park for hands-on learning experiences.

Wieringa served nearly 20 years on the school’s teacher-lead team as well, helping with administrative duties and developing a wealth of knowledge about how the state’s reporting systems and testing works. Wieringa stepped away from helping to lead the school this year, though she remained on-hand to answer questions.

“I’ve just been able to focus on teaching [this year], but, you know, you’re mowing the lawn, you’re shoveling the walk, you’re looking at five-year plans for the building,” Wieringa said. “I mean, it’s just kind of everything. And I mean, anybody who teaches in a rural area knows that you’re not just a teacher. You’re kind of an everything. You’re the plumber, you just kind of step in and do whatever it takes.”

In 2019, Wieringa was named the Montana Rural Teacher of the Year. She taught through the Covid-19 pandemic and has watched as her industry deals with a dire teacher shortage. At West Glacier Elementary School, Wieringa said that impact has been felt when positions come open and fewer qualified applicants throw their names into the ring.

Even as she’s watched changes at the school and in her chosen career field, Wieringa said what doesn’t change about her job is that her focus always comes back to the students.

“I think really supporting each other and really having that understanding and always keeping the kids first is really important,” Wieringa said. “And education has changed and it’s one of those, you never know what you’re going to walk into every day… there’s different philosophies, but it all kind of for me at this point goes back to, you know, you just do your best every day. And we’re all here to love each other and get better.”

At the beginning of a Wednesday class period, a student sitting at the front of Wieringa’s classroom jumped up and down, attempting to win Wieringa’s attention to answer a question.

“Let’s try that again,” Wieringa said.

Immediately, the student’s temperament changed. He sat down in the chair and quietly raised his hand for Wieringa to call on him.

At the end of the school year, her class worked in partners to build and wire robots. Wieringa swirled around the room in a display of controlled chaos, laughing with some students and helping others to troubleshoot as they tried to determine why their robots weren’t performing actions they wanted.

Wieringa’s colleagues and students described her teaching style as strict, but with flexibility.

Lindsay Kindred, a West Glacier Elementary School kindergarten teacher and teacher-lead team member, said when she first began her career as an educator, she was a “black and white thinker.” But watching Wieringa teach changed her view of the most effective approach when it comes to getting a lesson to stick with students.

“Just watching her be able to kind of roll with the punches showed me that if we kind of go off script, you’re way more likely to take a lot more out of that than sticking to the script or whatever you have planned because, one, the kids are interested in wherever they’re leading it, and two, they’re invested in that,” Kindred said.

Lela Baumann, another colleague of Wieringa’s who used to substitute teach at West Glacier Elementary School before taking a full-time job there, credited Wieringa not only with inspiring students through those types of conversations, but also, with inspiring her own teaching career. Baumann said she wanted to become a full-time educator after listening in on a lesson Wieringa gave about Norton Juster’s novel, “The Phantom Tollbooth.” Wieringa, she said, led her students through a captivating discussion about perspective based on a scene in the novel. Baumann wanted to be able to impart those kinds of lessons to students, too.

While Kindred and Baumann both described focus in Wieringa’s classroom, they also said Wieringa has walked the right line of giving students an opportunity to be silly in the pursuit of learning. Hilgers, her former student, said the same thing. During the Oregon Trail simulation, one of his most-clear memories was finding out that eating one’s horse was a better survival technique than keeping the horse. The discovery created an uproar in the class. After some discussion, Wieringa ended up declining it as an option.

That willingness to have fun in the classroom, and her caring nature, remains imbued in Wieringa’s approach decades later, according to her current students.

Max Hilgers, the fifth grader whose dad also had Wieringa as a teacher, said Wieringa was “strict, but makes stuff fun.” He feels she has prepared him for junior high and entering a new environment with more students by helping him become a better listener and more respectful student.

Gretchen Soto, another fifth grader in Wieringa’s class, agreed with Max Hilgers that Wieringa could be strict, but they also have fun in class. Soto enjoyed programming robots in Wieringa’s class. She also said she struggles at times with math testing and gets nervous with people watching her take tests. Wieringa, Soto said, will allow her to take a breather in the hallway when she gets too nervous.

“I’m really sad she’s leaving,” said Finley Roland, another fifth grader in Wieringa’s class. “I always wanted to be with her for sixth grade. But I’m excited for her.”

Wieringa’s also well-known for several traditions, which have been important for students as they depart the school over the years. Students pointed out a loft in her classroom, explaining each of them sign it when they leave West Glacier Elementary School. Signatures on the loft dated back as far as 2007. Soto pointed out her brother’s signature, from 2019. She added that even though her brother is turning 20 this year, Wieringa still remembers him perfectly.

Kindred said Wieringa has also long run the school’s graduation ceremony. An emotional event as students leave the elementary school they grew up at, Kindred said Wieringa usually cries at the ceremony.

This year, Wieringa’s students won’t be the only ones graduating.

Her colleagues plan to “graduate” Wieringa into the next phase of her life — retirement — at this year’s ceremony.

The celebration of Wieringa will continue into the summer, as her colleagues are also planning a community retirement party to celebrate her decades of service to West Glacier Elementary School.

The community will gather at the Stonefly Lounge, in Coram, at 6 p.m. on June 20 to honor Wieringa’s career and send her off into retirement. A flyer for the event encourages attendees and former students or colleagues to share a fun story or memory about Wieringa prior to the event with [email protected]. Kindred and another colleague, Rachelle Aldrich, are also taking donations for a retirement gift and party supplies.

As for Wieringa, she said she doesn’t have big retirement plans.

“I want to spend more time with my family, of course,” Wieringa said, “and sit in my backyard and go out and enjoy nature, and I like to watercolor paint and just do some of those things and explore new things, too.”

And she still plans to visit West Glacier Elementary School from time to time.

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