Hansen set to retire as 3rd grade teacher in Aurora
Barb Hansen has a thick folder full of papers she has saved over the years during her 19-year career as an educator, but it has nothing to do with curriculum or classroom preparation.
Instead, it’s a treasure trove of assignments or notes written by former students who shared a word of thanks or a memory years after leaving her classroom. That folder means the world to Hansen, who will be retiring in May as a veteran elementary teacher at Aurora Public Schools.
“Every year I keep things,” Hansen shared as she sat down to reflect on her teaching career. “There have been times when kids graduate from high school and I’ll send them something they wrote in kindergarten or third grade. I was lucky enough to have one of my kindergarten classes twice (because she switched from kindergarten to third grade at one point) and it was so nice to see how much they’d grown. It was a special year.”
And not just for Hansen, apparently, based on one of the notes she has filed away in her special memory folder.
“Thank you for influencing me to ask questions in third grade,” a middle school boy wrote a few years after his time in Hansen’s classroom. “I know it’s small, but it really has helped me in future grades. I also want to thank you for dealing with me for two years. That must have been pretty challenging. The last thing I want to thank you for is that you really influenced my happy, energetic personality. You really taught me that it’s good to be happy and to live the best life I can.”
Heart-felt feedback like that from former students, sometimes many years after she had them in class, are priceless in Hansen’s view.
“I hang on to these because there are times when teaching is hard and you don’t know if you’re making a difference,” she confided. “Sometimes there’s just a lot of outside noise that makes you kind of doubt yourself. These are the things that make me see that I am making a difference, so I’ve kept a lot of those. It’s just really rewarding to know that you made a difference and that they remember you.”
“As my time here at Aurora elementary comes to an end and my time at middle school starts I want to say that you are my favorite teacher,” another student wrote in a note tucked away in Hansen’s feel-good folder. “You inspired me to like learning, so this is why I’m writing this, to thank you for a great education.”
A native of York, Hansen took a delayed path back to the classroom herself, not deciding to pursue a teaching degree until her own three children were older. In fact, Hansen earned her bachelor’s degree in 2005, the same year her oldest daughter Nicole graduated from Aurora High School.
“It took me seven years to get my bachelor’s degree because I was working full-time (as a third/fourth grade para in Aurora), being a mom full-time and I had to drive to Kearney for 2-1/2 years every day to finish things off, all while going to all of my girls activities,” she recalled. “That was a very, very busy time.”
Hansen’s first job was teaching second grade at West Lawn Elementary in Grand Island, during which time she continued working toward her masters degree. With that completed in 2008, she was offered a position in Aurora.
“I was hired for kindergarten here and I think when Mr. Standage called and offered me the position kindergarten was not something that had ever crossed my mind,” she said. “I accepted it and did that for eight years, and I have to say I loved kindergarten. It taught me a lot.
“You do not see that kind of growth in any other grade level,” she continued. “Some of them come not knowing how to write their name and by the end they are writing sentences. With reading, many of them come in not knowing how to read and they leave reading well. I think that’s probably the thing I missed the most about kindergarten.”
Eight years later, when the opportunity came to make the move to third grade, Hansen recalls it being a smooth transition.
“I like the independence that they have,” she said of her third grade students, a grade she stayed with for the final eight years of her career. “They still really love school and they love their teachers, so they’re a pretty easy age group to love.”
COVID era
Looking back over her years in the classroom, Hansen recalled a time that was especially challenging, both for teachers and their students.
“I missed my kids,” she said of the initial shock when schools across the country were closed in March of 2020 as the COVID pandemic hit. “I missed bouncing ideas off of my co-workers. My team of teachers here we’ve become very close friends because you spend more time with them than you do your family. You know what, there are different teachers throughout the building that I know I can always go to. Some are in younger grades, some are upper grades and it’s just a strong sense of community.
“We began the year wearing masks, so I did not ever see my students’ faces,” she added about her COVID experience. “Most of my girls had ponytails so it was hard to tell them apart with the mask. I also remembers that when I would see them outside of school and they were not wearing a mask that I would not recognize them. That was awful.”
Teaching itself was such a challenge during that time, she continued, recalling endless hours on Zoom.
“I remember once during COVID when we came back I had two students on Zoom while I was teaching a math lesson on fractions while teaching my classroom,” she said. “And then you have kids who are misbehaving on Zoom and their parents are right there and what are you going to say? I think I learned a lot about myself during that time, though, because if I can do that … Teaching is the hardest thing I’ve ever done, and also the most rewarding thing I’ve ever done.”
Asked what prompted the timing of her decision to retire, Hansen said a good friend who was close to her age passed away, which really got her attention.
“Life is short,” she said. “I have eight grandchildren who are all under the age of 7 and I want to spend time going to their activities,” she said. “I will miss teaching kids because of the love that they give you, and honestly I have learned as much from them as I hope I’ve taught them. That was the hard part, but I just want to spend time with my grandkids.”
Hansen and her husband, Gene, who works in the organic farming industry, have three daughters — Nicole and Jim Ediger live in Aurora, Katie and Ben Altman live in Lincoln, and Taylor and Steven Stauffer live in Lincoln.
“Something will come up, I know it will,” Hansen said when asked what she plans to do in retirement. “I don’t know what it will be at this point. I’d like to do some kind of volunteering and if something comes up that I just can’t pass up I’ll consider that.”
Personal motivation
Though the last day of school will be emotional in May, Hansen said she has no doubt she is ready.
“I will leave with a lot of satisfaction that I know I’ve made mistakes, but I think I’ve learned from any mistakes that I made,” she said. “And that’s what I always tell me kids. As long as you learn from your mistakes, you’re moving forward, and that’s what it’s all about.”
Hansen also shared that her motivation for pursuing a teaching career was very personal, and when all is said and done she hopes she was able to impact kids the way some of her teachers improved her life for the better.
“The reason I got into teaching is that school was my safe place,” she explained. “I didn’t have a very stable home life and my third and fourth grade teachers took care of me. That’s what I wanted to do and that’s been my goal.
“Kids will learn and I will teach them, but I wanted them to know that they’re safe and that they are loved,” she concluded. “Those kids who are the most challenging are the ones that I gravitate toward. Some of them will be fine without us, but there are some who really need us. Just knowing that somebody loves them and somebody cares about them is so important.”