Joyce Koselke, affectionately known to her French students as Madame, will end her 43 year run teaching at La Porte High School this May. While Koselke will no longer be at La Porte High School next year, the impact she has had on her faculty and students will linger.
Koselke has learned through her years of teaching, which makes her classroom environment a unique place to be. She connects with her students beyond the classroom and personally honors each of her students’ birthdays. She loves to teach about French culture and often sings classic French tunes. She often has more energy than her students and will rise superbly early to bake quiche for French Club. It goes without saying her favorite thing about teaching is her students.
When asked, her face light up and she gushed, “I love my students. They make my job what it is. They are the crème-de la-crème. I may be prejudiced, but I’ve just always had a feeling they are elite. French is a very cultural place with the art, the cuisine and the language. My students seem to appreciate the language and the culture. They all are hard workers, and in all my years I have had very few disciplinary issues. We are just one big happy family.”
The students obviously reciprocate Koselke’s feelings. Her favorite memory is, “having been an honored guest at 18 Pride Banquets since they began in the 90s.” Part of her connection with the students comes from her genuine concern. Through the years she has realized the amount of stressors on students, so she makes an extra effort to take these issues into consideration.
“I try to keep abreast with what is going on in the students’ lives,” she said. “Through the years I’ve had to learn how to understand where my students are coming from.”
Koselke had a unique early educational experience, which inspires her today. Born in Mattoon, Ill., she attended a one room Lutheran school containing grades 1-8, where she had the largest class in the school of just four children. Her teacher somehow managed to teach eight different grades all in the same classroom, similar to Koselke’s situation today.
Madame is the only French teacher at La Porte High School and even teaches French III and French IV at the same time. After the Lutheran school closed, Koselke attended the city middle school and then Mattoon High School. Koselke chose to attend Valparaiso University and instantly loved the small class sizes and variety of people she met from around the country. She first entered college undecided but discovered her interest in French.
“Of all the classes I took, French seemed the easiest and most interesting to me," she said. "My first professor was from France and I had taken some French in high school, so I was placed into higher classes. It was very interesting to me to be able to speak to an actual person from France.”
Despite teaching being such a natural fit, Koselke never anticipated she would be a teacher. Yet majoring in French led her to teaching. Her student teaching took place at La Porte High School and since then she has never left. Her first years of teaching were a unique learning experience.
“My first years were interesting,” she said. “When I graduated college I was 21. I was able to start school early because of going to a Lutheran school, so my senior students were only three years younger than I. The hardest part was learning to be a figure of authority and have respect. I was just growing into my teaching at this time.”
Koselke has certainly grown into her position and now flawlessly teaches both French and valuable life lessons. Her motto: “Nice matters,” is repeated almost daily.
“I don’t like negative talking about others and try to reinforce [that] the students [should] treat other as they want to be treated,” Koselke said. “I think instilling that moral is important and my students seem to adopt it.”
Through her many years teaching, Madame has witnessed change in the education field, primarily with technology.
“The advent of the internet has been the biggest change which has provided an instant plethora of information to both students and educators,” she said.
Koselke values La Porte for its proximity to the Great Lakes and Chicago. Although she loves spending time in the city, at heart she is a “country bumpkin” that enjoys the calm of La Porte and spending time in her garden. She also keeps involved through the community with her church, Door Village, and is a former member of Delta Kappa Gamma, a professional organization for women educators. In her younger years, she participated in a local tennis league.
Reading, skiing, gardening, art and visiting French cultures are Koselke’s passions. She has thus far visited France six or seven times. She will, of course, keep active in her retirement with plans to volunteer with reading programs, keep active at the YMCA and keep her mind sharp.
“Try to learn something new every day,” she said. “Expand your knowledge on as many subjects as possible.”
Koselke also took a moment to give a valuable piece of advice to all educators, “Always teach from the heart as well as from the book.”