Teaching children and touching hearts

“It has never been a job.”

Kathy Jalbert says that is how she has long felt about her career as a Catholic school teacher.

“I love how we can start every morning with a smile on our face. Every day is a new day. We have something to be thankful for every day,” she says.

Jalbert, who retired at the end of the school year, has been an educator for 44 years. She started out teaching in public schools, but when her own children reached school age, she knew that she wanted them to have a Catholic education.

“I wanted to raise my kids in the Catholic school because I wanted the best for them,” she says.

 This desire led her to St. Joseph School in Lewiston, both as a parent and as a teacher.

“I wanted to be somewhere where the community was raising my children with God in their life,” she says.

Except for one year at Holy Cross School in Lewiston, Jalbert taught at St. Joseph until the Lewiston-Auburn Catholic schools merged in 2006 to form Trinity Catholic, which was then incorporated into Saint Dominic Academy, where she has taught ever since.

Jalbert began as a second-grade teacher but switched to first grade early on after the retirement of Sister Monica Dubois, OP.

“I was so scared to replace a nun, so scared to fill those shoes, but we co-taught for a few years. I learned a lot from her,” says Jalbert. “She was an awesome mentor.”

Something Jalbert then became for many others.

“I truly learned everything from Kathy, everything,” says Katie Fournier, a fellow first-grade teacher at St. Dom’s, whose daughter used to be in Jalbert’s class. “She was an amazing mentor, an amazing friend, and it was really a beautiful experience to see both sides of her: to see her as my daughter’s teacher in the past and to get mentored sort of in that way from her, because there were a lot of things that she taught me about my daughter and her learning. Then, working as a teacher, I learned so much from her. I can’t say enough good things about her.”

“She always taught me to let things go, let things roll off my shoulders and to take it day by day and just keep being the best version of myself,” says Norma Williams, a third-grade teacher and former student of Jalbert’s. “She was amazing. She still has my picture hung up in her classroom and a sticky note that I wrote ‘I love you’ on. She was always charismatic, super caring, loving to everybody, and she still is to this day.”

Jalbert says one of her favorite things about teaching first grade is the unconditional love you receive from the students.

“You don’t have to work at it. You don’t. It’s there,” she says.

And she says the connections you make are often long lasting. One of her greatest joys, she says, is seeing former students.

“We would always have an opening Mass on the first day of school, and I would see former students whose children were starting in kindergarten, and they waited outside for me to come down from the school and go into the church, to see me and introduce me to their children whom I would be later having in my classroom,” she says. “That touched my heart tremendously.”

Principal J.P. Yorkey says one of Jalbert’s many gifts is her ability to recognize her former students years later.

“Even if they’re adults, she can see their faces, and she knows who they are. You see adults kind of look at her, wondering if she remembers them, and she does,” he says. “She is special.”

And the children are special to her. Jalbert says there is no doubt what she will miss most about teaching.

“The kids,” she says. “My students were my kids. Honestly, every year, I wanted to do the best I could for them, the same way I would do it for my own children.”

Jalbert says it has been a gift to teach in a Catholic school because God is present every day, throughout the day.

“The students are so comfortable with God in their lives because they live it every day. We can always rely on God,” she says. “If they’re having a good day: ‘Thank you, God.’ If they’re having a bad day: ‘I need help, God.’ God is a big part of their life in all ways, throughout their whole day, and I love that when they go home, they share that with their families, too.”

Although she will no longer be in the classroom every day, Jalbert doesn’t plan to step away completely. She says she may volunteer in the office or do some substitute teaching, and she plans on attending student Masses held at Holy Cross Church. She says on the last day of school, she told the students, ‘No goodbyes. See you later. I’ll be back.’”

That is not only welcome news for the children but for colleagues as well.

“I love her. She has been amazing,” says Lisa Williams, a second-grade teacher. “I’m going to miss her smiles. I am just going to miss seeing her as a friend. We would talk all the time.”

“She is one of those teachers that every time you saw her in the hallway, she always made sure to smile at you and to check in,” says Norma Williams. “She is just a great person to be around.”