“When I graduated from high school at SEM, the one thing I knew I didn't want to be was a teacher!,” said Suzanne Wendorff. “My mom was a teacher and I honestly didn't like school that much, so I went to business school at Lincoln School of Commerce.”

Suzanne then spent the next 20 years working in various offices as well as helping her husband Mike with the Callaway Courier newspaper. She said it wasn't until she went to work at the Callaway school as a para that she thought about getting an education degree.

“After our girls had graduated from high school, at age 40, I went back to college at UNK to get my teaching degree. I drove back and forth from Callaway to Kearney for four years to get my degree,” said Suzanne.

After completing her degree she did some substitute teaching before being hired at Lexington Public Schools. There she held a variety of positions, including serving as the autism teacher for one year, a reading specialist for four years, a 2nd grade dual language teacher for nine years and an instructional coach for one year.

“I loved my time in Lexington. LPS is an incredible system, but five years ago I was offered a special education position in Callaway. While I loved what I was doing in Lexington, the daily drive was wearing, so I started in Callaway,” Suzanne explained. “I taught special education for elementary students for the past five years.”

Her undergraduate degree was a double major of elementary education and K-12 special education. Suzanne received her master's degree in reading K-12, both from UNK.

“Building and maintaining relationships with students, staff and parents has been the most rewarding thing I will take away from my 20-year teaching career,” she added. “Your students truly do become ‘your kids’ and will be that way for life. I have been blessed with amazing co-teachers and administrators over the years, but the most important is definitely relationships with the students. I have learned that a student will not learn from a teacher they don't have a relationship with. All children need to feel valued, respected and loved. It is the simple formula that works miracles.”

Suzanne said that she sees education constantly changing. Seasoned teachers see trends come and go and the pendulum goes back and forth. “If you are in the field long enough, teachers will see everything come full circle in many curriculum areas. Technology has changed the way teachers present and students learn new information. Covid taught us all how to teach online, but nothing replaces face-to-face contact every day,” she shared.

Suzanne is not the only teacher in the family. Her daughter, Mary and granddaughter, Ashton are both teachers. “When they began their education path, they both knew they wanted to follow in the footsteps of me, my mother, and my grandmother,” Suzanne explained. “They watched the struggles and victories of being in the classroom and decided this would be their career. I would tell others looking at education as a career what I told them, ‘you won't make a fortune, but you can make a difference’. Sometimes that is enough.”