American News, Aberdeen, June 6
With end of school year, we salute the best of our teachers
For some teachers, school is out forever.
Each year, lots of teachers retire in South Dakota and nationwide. Some of our best and brightest.
Not every teacher was the greatest. A few outstanding ones sprinkled with some really good ones. Then there are the good-average-OK ones with a few bad ones souring the profession.
Your career choice does not give you any free passes. You have to earn your stripes, and then work hard to stay ahead of the pack to be in those top tiers.
Teachers are no different. There are bad, good and great ones. The title of teacher does not magically make you a great person for children, or adults, to be around.
To the best of you teachers who are putting away your school supplies for the last time, thank you for your service, dedication and what you did your students, colleagues and schools. And thank you to the many great teachers who have gone before you and to those who remain in the classrooms.
You will never know how many lives you changed for the better.
But what superior riches await those extraordinary teachers when one of their extraordinary students returns with the humble words “you were the one person who made a big difference in my life.”
Among the lowest paid in the nation or not, that is quite the bonus.
So many successful people in this world can trace a life-changing year to one of their special teachers. Most teachers spend hours a day with our children; most parents only a few.
The best of our teachers embraces us with their patience, energy, communication skills and the examples they set. At times, they make us feel like the only one in the room in a classroom of 25.
These are the teachers who make our children happy to go to school and sad to leave it.
The ones who arrive early and leave late. The ones who kids, parents and principals can’t brag enough about. The ones who turn around when meeting a student in need after a long day and a longing to get home to spend time with their own families.
These are the teachers who administrators hold up as examples to first-year teachers of what it means to be a teacher.
So to the ones who went the extra mile and then some, thank you.
Teachers such as Peggy Abeln, who has just retired after a 44-year career. She was one of the founding teachers at First Baptist Christian School in 1982, which, through the course of years and mergers, became Aberdeen Christian School.
For the past 35 years, Abeln has worked at Aberdeen Christian. She is reluctantly retiring.
“The heart is willing, the body is shot,” Abeln said of health concerns which forced her hand.
And thank you to the teachers who are still going the extra mile.
Teachers such as Patty Stoner of Gettysburg, who started teaching 60 years ago. At 82, she’s not ready to quit anytime soon.
May 26 was declared Patricia M. Stoner Day in South Dakota by Gov. Dennis Daugaard.
Once teaching colleagues in Gettysburg, Stoner and Abeln have taught generations of families, influenced hundreds of students in this area, and put a daily dose of passion in their backpacks.
Two teachers, 104 years of experience and another proud moment for Northern State, where both learned how to become teachers.
All give this region a lot to smile about.
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The Daily Republic, Mitchell, June 6
A blue-green wake-up call from our lake
If you didn’t think Lake Mitchell needed some serious attention, we invite you to drive out to the lake and lay your eyes on what might be the worst the lake’s looked in years.
Over the weekend, Mitchell residents kindly submitted photos of Lake Mitchell, and what we saw was a disaster.
Water quality has slowly declined over the years, with the whispers from Mitchell residents claiming Lake Mitchell needs to be restored turning into a dull roar. And we’re right on board with them.
The vibrant blue foam and green sludge accumulating on Lake Mitchell’s shores is enough to scare off the bravest swimmer. The putrid algae can even be seen from high above the lake. If this isn’t a wake-up call to those who have questioned investing funds into the eventual restoration of Lake Mitchell, we’re not sure what will.
Recently, the Mitchell City Council denied a plan to create a lake manager job who would have been tasked, in part, with working with the Lake Mitchell Advisory Committee. We then called upon the council to give the post a second look. Maybe the current state of the lake will be the tipping point for the five council members who voted against the plan to support the new post.
The council will soon be asked to determine whether to move forward with phase two of Omaha-based water quality experts Fyra Engineering’s plan to find ways to restore the lake.
We hope - even if it costs hundreds of thousands of dollars - the new City Council thinks long and hard about moving forward with Fyra’s plan. It very well could be critical in allowing residents to swim in the city’s beloved lake again.
Now is the time to act, and we urge everyone to check out Lake Mitchell to witness what our lake has become. This lake belongs to all of us, and we’ll all have to pitch in to save it. We’ll do our part by urging the council to move forward with the second phase of Fyra’s plan if costs are reasonable, and we hope you do the same.
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Yankton Daily Press & Dakotan, Yankton, June 5
Ribfest Builds For The Future
Change is hard. That’s something the organizers of Yankton’s Rockin’ Ribfest likely understood prior to this past weekend, and they certainly understand it now.
But hard change can pay off down the line, if the Ribfest crew sticks with it.
Yankton’s annual early-summer ribs festival - which is a success story of continual evolution - made a bold move this year, shifting the event from Fantle Memorial Park to the NFAA Easton Yankton Archery Center. It was also decided to charge an admission for entry into the event in order to help Ribfest grow.
As of this writing, the attendance figures for this past weekend have not been announced, but they were certainly down from last year. Crowds were very light Friday and much of Saturday; only on Saturday evening, when headlining band Hairball took the stage, did the numbers return and Ribfest seemed like Ribfest again.
The changes did not come without complaints, particularly concerning the admission price, which was a $10 fee that covered the entire event. There were also grumblings about moving Ribfest away from centrally located Memorial Park, where the event performed wonderfully, to the archery center.
However, we do understand the reasons why this was done.
Memorial Park was practically perfect for this event - except there was no way organizers could even begin to charge the admission. And without generating that revenue, it would be very difficult for the event to continue growing.
Charging an admission price after being free for years (although, as memory serves, there was a modest admission charged in the first days of Ribfest) is a consequence of the demands for growth. Without it, Ribfest could not change or expand, and it would eventually lose its allure. That’s part of the evolution process. We suspect the hubbub over this will die down in the future as the fee (which was not exorbitant for 1 ½ days of entertainment) becomes a fixed feature.
The move to the archery center was a calculated risk for a few reasons, including this one: The complex is still a mystery to a lot of people. A comment heard from a few people Saturday night was that they had no idea those fields - which are spacious places built to hold world-class archery events - were even out there. Well, they are, and as this weekend showed, they offer more than enough room for a lot of growth and flexibility, which certainly has to be attractive to Ribfest organizers. Now, after this weekend’s exposure, a lot more people know about the facility (it’s safe to assume that, for many people, it was the first time they had even been there). This will serve Ribfest, the archery center and Yankton well in the future.
There was a lot to learn from this past weekend’s Ribfest, and hopefully, organizers can use those lessons going forward. Perhaps there is a need for more promotion. Perhaps it needs to move to the following weekend in order to not conflict with a ribs event in Sioux Falls (if that is even a problem). There are no doubt other possibilities out there.
The worst possibility would be to pull the plug on the event altogether, which, fortunately, no one is talking about today. Ribfest has been successful from its inception, and each change has brought new opportunities. And so it remains.
Change really is hard. But the rewards can make all the headaches worth it.
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