PRINTLifelong leaders
Teachers Jan Haffey and Vicki Reimler aren’t planning retirement vacations (not yet anyway)
PHOTO: Laura Herring
Hickman science teacher Jan Haffey helps her students review for an exam. Haffey teaches five sections of human anatomy and physiology. “It’s great to have that many kids in the course,” she says.
September 24, 2009 | 12:00 a.m. CST
Both Vicki Reimler of Rock Bridge and Jan Haffey of Hickman have the longest-running careers at their respective high schools. Reimler has been hearing her voice echo in the halls for 28 years, and yet she claims she hasn’t worked a day in her life. Haffey just started her 36th year of teaching and says she still enjoys her students immensely. Her passion for teaching hasn’t subsided.
Reimler, who teaches physical education and health, has taught about 6,000 students since the fall of 1982. Comfortable in her office, Reimler sits next to a bookshelf that displays photos of past volleyball and basketball teams. A photo of her cats faces her desk.
Rock Bridge physical education teacher Vicki Reimler gives encouragement in class.
- Scenes from the Providence Bowl
- Fast times at Hickman High
- Tech-savvy students
- The young and the reckless
- Rumors and realities
- Overcoming obstacles
- The spread
- The Education of Segregation
- Edged out
- Roosters, cows and mice, oh my!
- Crosstown competition
- Playing the field
- Say what?
- Where are they now?
- On the Job: High School Custodians
- After-school alliance
- Rival Survival
- Through the Years
- High school mascots go head to head
Never married, Reimler jokes that she has been wed to Rock Bridge all these years and refers to her students as her children. A divorce has been planned after 31 years for 2013, but Reimler isn’t in a rush. “We’ll just see,” she says. “I’m going to play every year by year. People keep telling me I’ll know when the time is right.”
Across town, in the fall of 1973, Jan Haffey began teaching biology at Hickman, and she now teaches human anatomy and physiology there. Like Reimler, she has no plans of retiring soon. “I always say I would retire before the grandchildren of my former students started showing up,” she says.
Haffey has experienced her fair share of memorable moments at Hickman. She vividly remembers when President Reagan visited in 1987. “The school was in a flurry the week previous to his visit, with Secret Service agents and drug-sniffing dogs everywhere,” she says. She still got to hear his speech.
Moments have been memorable because of the laughs, too. Several years ago, Haffey’s students were observing the behaviors of living snails in class while Hickman was being examined by outside evaluators. “One sophomore girl was quite involved in watching her snail crawl across a glass plate, and she exclaimed, rather loudly, meaning to say, ‘Look how long his tentacles are!’, but instead substituted a similar-sounding anatomical term,” Haffey says. “My evaluator nearly fell off her seat in the back of the room!”
Reimler, too, has several fond teaching memories. After graduating from MU, Reimler stayed in Columbia to teach, but she really wanted to coach. She began teaching physical education in Farmington, Mo., in 1979 and was offered a position with Rock Bridge three years later that included a coaching contract. She coached volleyball, was assistant coach for girls basketball and even spent six years as the athletic director. Her last year coaching was in 2004, but winning games during those years isn’t what she considers success.
She recalls a student who overcame her fear of jumping on the trampoline during gym class in Farmington: “I will never forget the look on her face,” she says. “I remember her eyes lit up, and I knew there was no greater feeling than watching a kid experience success.”
After coaching for 21 years, Reimler has first-hand experience with the Hickman-Rock Bridge rivalry, though she didn’t understand the seriousness of it at first. When the volleyball teams were scheduled to play each other, Reimler says the girls got very riled up. “I was like, it’s just one match,” she says. “After 28 years, I can tell you, it’s not just one match. It is bragging rights for your school and yourself.”
Hickman assistant principal Doug Mirts was a student of Haffey’s in 1977 during his junior year of high school. He remembers her dynamic teaching style and hands-on approach to anatomy and physiology. “She had such a super-soft heart,” Mirts says. “She was a compassionate person and still is.”
Mirts says Haffey wasn’t surprised to see him return as a principal because they stayed in touch. Mirts has worked alongside Haffey for 14 years now, not including his years as a Hickman student. He says she doesn’t have a lot of secrets and discloses just about everything to her students. Perhaps this is why so many of them stay in contact with her.
The relationships these teachers have built with their students over the years have lasted, and they both use e-mail and Facebook to stay connected with former students. One such e-mail stands out for Haffey: The writer, a former student, had a child who was born with a genetic disorder. “The condition required extensive hospitalization and multiple surgeries, and she thanked me for the knowledge she had gained in my class, which helped her feel comfortable communicating with the doctors and understanding the implications of various treatments,” Haffey says. “And I think that is the real value of the class I teach — whether students go on to become doctors or not — that everything they learn about the human body is relevant to them.”
Reimler also stays in contact with several former students. Angela Lear, a 1987 Rock Bridge graduate, was on the basketball team and was Reimler’s physical education student. Lear now lives in North Carolina, and though she hasn’t seen Reimler much, she keeps in touch. “She was always very supportive and encouraging,” Lear says. “My parents went through a divorce my senior year. She was very good at just listening and helping me sort out feelings. The summer after high school, I would just knock on her door, and she was always there.”
Matt Benedict, a 1986 Rock Bridge graduate, still keeps in contact with Reimler and, after all this time, doesn’t hesitate to describe her. “You know Vicki cares about you today, even after all these years, and to me that’s the mark of a good teacher,” he says.
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