Story and picture by Mike Christopherson
Fisher Public Schools held a school-wide assembly on Friday, May 27, to say farewell to a longtime teacher, Laura Brekken, after 34 years at Fisher. Below is a story all about her trials and recollections of her journey at Fisher Public Schools;
Had Laura Brekken not been convinced otherwise more than three decades ago, her entire teaching career might have lasted all of one day.
Fresh off earning her degree from the University of North Dakota and being hired as the first-grade teacher at Fisher Public School two weeks before the start of the school year, after one day – the first day of school that Fall – Brekken, 22, at the time, was ready to be done.
“The first day was horrible; I went home and cried,” Brekken recalls.
She picked up the phone and called one of her mentors, Elaine Krogstad, whom Brekken had previously student-taught for. “I said, ‘How can I get out of my contract?” she recalls. “I told her, ‘I can’t do this.'”
Krogstad -whom, along with Penny (Walker) Blokzyl, Brekken went to for advice on teaching and other topics in those days – told Brekken that she most definitely could do it. She advised Brekken that, especially early on in the school year, she had to be firm with her first-graders, make sure they knew she was in charge, and establish rules and expectations and a consistent schedule while balancing her authority with being compassionate and understanding.
“I came back the next day and just kept coming back and coming back,” Brekken says. “And the rest, as they say, is history.”
That history has added up to a 34-year teaching career, all at Fisher Public School, which is coming to an end this spring with Brekken’s retirement. After spending 30 years in first grade, she’s spent the past four years as the Title reading teacher at the school.
On May 27, the last day of 2021-22, Brekken was celebrated at a school-wide assembly in the gymnasium, where she was presented with various gifts, including a framed print of a tree featuring multi-colored fingerprints of every student in the school. Her husband, Brad, was there to present her with 38 roses; 34 represented her years at Fisher School, two represented her roles as a wife and mother (to Marcus and Blake), and two yellow roses represented her two young grandsons, one three years old and one born just a month ago. At the conclusion of the assembly, Brekken was surrounded by a sea of students, from kindergarten to twelfth grade, and spotting dry eyes was a challenge.
Krogstad’s advice was critically important to her more than 30 years ago, but, Brekken says, even though “times have changed so much” since her first fall in the classroom, much of Krogstad’s wise words ring true today.
“With all the classes you take and the experience you think you have, you don’t know until you are in the classroom and you, as the teacher, are in charge,” Brekken notes. “As the days and weeks and months passed, Elaine’s words rang so true. You need structure and expectations. You need to lay it all out and work with your kids, so they meet those expectations, and there need to be consequences if they don’t.
“That’s something as a teacher that you practice every year, no matter how much experience you have,” she continues. “Every year, every class is different, your students are different, and they may need something different from me than what I did the previous year.”
But, even if one first-grade class was different than the one that preceded it, Brekken says it always came down to one critical thing: Respect.
“The primary goal wasn’t always to have my students like me, necessarily,” she explains. “But they needed to respect me. When they respect me, and I respect them, I feel that’s when learning happens.”
After three decades in the classroom, Brekken felt it might be time for a shift, and she moved into her Title reading role. “I loved my 30 years in first grade, but I could feel that maybe it was time for a different path,” she recalls. “My passion has always been reading, so it seemed like a natural segue when the position opened up.”
Brad won’t retire for a few more years. But Brekken has plenty of things to keep her busy, mainly in the form of her two grandsons living in Rochester, Minnesota. “I already have nanny jobs set up with them,” Brekken said. “I’m so glad and grateful that I’ll be available to help out.”
Still, she knows not teaching after 34 years will be a “shock” to her system. “This is all I’ve ever really wanted to do, and I’ve been blessed to be able to do it for so long,” Brekken says. “I’ve had wonderful mentors, starting with my parents. Children were always very valued in our family.” (Brekken has nine siblings.)
Perhaps more than anything, she says she’ll miss her young students’ “honesty” and “innocence.”
“That all comes from a place of truth, and I’m definitely going to miss that,” Brekken says. “But I feel like it’s time for me to step back and let someone else do this job and enjoy it as much as I have.”
Brekken will also miss the Fisher community, which she’s always admired for being so supportive of its school, home to preschool through twelfth grade, all under one roof.
“I really benefited from that K-12 experience, seeing kids literally grow up right before my eyes,” Brekken notes. “As a teacher, nothing brings me more joy than to be at Hugo’s or Walmart or the fair and see former students with their own children, and they come up to me.” Fisher School’s current kindergarten class, she adds, includes eight kids whose parents were taught by none other than Brekken. “I find such joy in realizing things like that,” she says.
