By Leah Sander
InkFreeNews
MENTONE — Sandi Schaeffer believes art skills taught to students at a young age may be used throughout life.
“I want the kids to understand how you can use this the rest of your life,” she said. “You can use it in decorating your home. You can use it as just enjoying something outside of your workplace.”
Schaeffer, Mentone, recently retired after a 26-year career teaching art. All but a half-year of it was spent with Rochester Community Schools.
Teaching is in her blood, with her late grandmother and father both being educators. Her father, Forst Dunnuck, served as the first principal at Tippecanoe Valley High School from where Schaeffer graduated.
He “encouraged” her also entering the field of education, said Schaeffer.
“I knew I wanted to do something in art,” said Schaeffer. “I thought I like art, and I think I want to teach that because artists don’t always make it … Most of my family had all gone to Purdue (University), so because my dad had been a teacher and a principal, he encouraged that direction.”
Schaeffer got her Bachelor of Arts in art from Purdue and her Master of Education from Indiana University.
She taught for a half year right out of college at TVHS to cover maternity leave for her own high school art teacher, Jan Mills. Schaeffer then taught at Rochester Middle School for 10 years before taking a break to focus on her family.
She and her husband, Jon, who will be married 39 years next month, had adopted their son, Paul, from Russia before she gave birth to their daughter, Sydney.
Sandi was a stay-at-home mom for 12 years, subbing with the Tippecanoe Valley School Corp. during that time. Rochester Community Schools then contacted Sandi about an opening.
“At the time, they had a lot of new teachers, and they wanted somebody experienced,” she said.
She was the RMS art teacher again “for about six or seven years” before she also became the Rochester High School art teacher as that spot was vacant.
“Then finally they did some more rearranging and then in the last four or five years, I’ve been just at the high school all year,” she said. “I really have enjoyed the high school kids. I think I was meant to teach high school all those years.”
She said she’d miss most “the relationships with the students.”
Sandi also said she’d miss her colleagues, but not rising early for class. She said she’s going to help care for family members now that she’s retired.
Art is also going to be part of Sandi’s retirement.
She enjoys drawing and painting and wants to work with stained glass. She said she may also help her former student, Tessa Brooks, with her Elemental Art Studio.
She’d encourage others to become art teachers because they get to “experience all of the art mediums” through class. Sandi noted other perks were getting the summers off and people potentially having the same schedule as their school-aged kids.
Sandi said art is everywhere.
“I tell kids all the time every place you look, anything that has been made, an artist has designed it,” she said. “From chairs to tables to what you are wearing, everything an artist has designed, so it’s not just appreciating going to an art museum. It’s you have it. You’re wearing it. You see it everywhere. So, I do have a passion to try to get that across to kids.”
