Christine Engels is what one could call a fixture. She’s been at Homewood’s Churchill School for 37 years working under seven principals. Engels will walk out of Churchill for the last time in July when she retires from District 153.

“I thought I’d go into optometry, but then you just feel that calling,” she said. Engels graduated with a degree in education from Elmhurst College and immediately got the job at Churchill as a third grade teacher. She was in the classroom for 22 years.

“I loved being a third grade teacher. The creativity you could use when you’re a classroom teacher. The bond you make with the families and extended families, and of course most importantly the students. I loved it,” she said.

Engels recalls all the hands-on learning she could do with students – everything from building pueblos when they studied Native Americans, to plays parents were invited to, to a Thanksgiving feast that Engels describes as “a gigantic potluck. We would feast.” After the food, students would recite poetry and sing songs accompanied by a pianist.

She was trained in StarLab, a type of blow-up igloo that was set up in the gym, that allowed Engels to project different lessons on the city sky and stars and constellations “and tell the stories from Greek mythology” while she laid on the floor and used a pointer.

There were the field trips to the zoo or Chicago’s Field Museum, the Planetarium, the Shedd Aquarium. A fun trip was putting kids on the trolley tour cars around downtown Chicago and then lunching at the Thompson Center. Engels tie-died shirts so her students all dressed alike for the field trips.

“There have been so many joys in this job where you extend the curriculum,” she said.
The last 15 years of her career were as a gifted teacher, and then an enrichment teacher.
“It’s called enrichment, which is a word for more,” Engels explained. She would have the students who tested well above their grade level in reading or math or both. Unlike a classroom teacher, Engels only had students for a limited time each week, but she did her best at offering interesting materials.

“It is such a joy to develop a student’s thirst and hunger for wanting to know more by providing them resources at various levels so that they can grow in it, because learning is layering and I try to tell them: Start with pictures in beginning, then go up one and then another and then let’s read a memoir,” the teacher explained.

Engels came to recognize that “everything that’s done is not done in solo. You study what you’re doing, you as a teacher are built on the foundation of others. I had fabulous mentors here and I hope our newer staff, I hope I paid it forward to them.” Over her career she also worked with three third grade student-teachers.

COVID proved to be a challenge, but it did make computers and laptops available to students and teachers alike.

“It allows great differentiation. I can check on students writing constantly,” she said. One computer program allowed teachers to watch students working. 

“I could watch them typing, and tell them ‘You forgot to put your name on. Don’t forget your capitals’” just by quickly scanning her computer screen. “I truly appreciate these changes.”

At the end of a COVID teaching day, Engels said her fellow teachers would help each other and share insights into what worked. For her, that ability to learn and rely on others was what made teaching a great job. 

“You have each other’s back; there’s so much caring,” she said, remembering that over 37 years she’s had “the love and the understanding from so many.”