Can a teacher make a difference in a child’s life? Wanda Gunter says absolutely. She knows that firsthand.
“My third and fourth grade teacher was Gay Graves at Central School in O’Fallon, Illinois. She was loving, caring, fun, and she challenged me,” Gunter recalls. “I lost my mom when I was 5 years old and Gay Graves took me under her wing. She made me realize the influence teachers can have on children and inspired me to be a teacher … and I never looked back.”
In her 35 years spent in classrooms — 30 of them in Willow School in Homewood — Gunter hopes she’s made kids feel special, too.
“I have wonderful memories,” she said.
She earned a degree in elementary education from Eastern Illinois University and taught fifth grade in Dolton District 148 for five years before joining the faculty at Willow. She was a second grade and fifth grade teacher at Willow before the conversion to grade centers. She transitioned to a part-time computer lab instructor and gifted math teacher. Her last position was teaching full time in the computer lab.
Her students now are kindergarten, first and second graders. Many are adapt at using technology, but Gunter has plenty of things to teach these young learners.
“The computer lab still has desktop computers. The kids use iPads in the classrooms though. Beginning in first grade I teach them proper keyboarding technique. I teach them about home-row finger placement and they think it is magical when I show them that I can type with my eyes closed!” she said. “They take it very seriously and try their best even though their hands are small and some strokes are difficult. I don’t expect them to keyboard properly but I want them to know that there is a correct way to do it.”
She also has a manual typewriter in the lab — just for fun. Her students think it’s “really cool” until they find out you can’t correct typing mistakes on it, like you can on a computer.
Gunter earned a master’s in education with an emphasis on math from Governors State University. She also served as president of the Homewood Education Association teachers union for about six years, a job made easier, she said, because of the “supportive and wonderful district.”
Gunter believes “the teaching profession’s gotten a bad rap for a long time.” It’s taken remote learning, forced on students because of the COVID-19 pandemic, to help change people’s minds about the importance of teachers, she said.
Education department numbers at colleges and universities are down. Gunter hopes that will change now. “If you have a passion for kids, go for it,” she tells prospective teachers.
