Associates Norm and Marabeth Freund Reflect as They Retire From Teaching

Associates Norm and Marabeth Freund of Dubuque, Iowa, are both teachers who will retire at the end of this school year.

Read about how association impacted their teaching and their lives in this Q&A interview by Associate Coordinator Grace Mendez.

How long have you been teaching?

Norm: I have taught full-time since the fall of 1980 (one year at Luther College, in Decorah, Iowa, and the rest at Clarke University).

Marabeth: I started in 1984 at Holy Ghost School in Dubuque . . . that makes 37 years.

Was there something special that led you to choose to teach? To teach at the level that you have been?

Norm: I had to present my junior year in a class at St. Ambrose in Davenport, Iowa. I felt “God’s pleasure” doing so and knew I wanted to teach at the collegiate level from that moment on!

Marabeth: Throughout my growing up years, I remember my mother telling me that I would be a good teacher. Believe it or not, I exhibited a bit of rebelliousness as a teenager and young adult, so when I started college, I wanted to major in anything but education . . . and I tried out a lot of different majors, finally settling on sociology. (No regrets . . . it was a great liberal arts education, and I loved the learning.)

In the year after my graduation, as I was holding our newborn baby in my hospital room, I had what I think can be described as an epiphany. I realized that I would be placing this precious child in the care of teachers for 13 years of his life. Suddenly, a paradigm shift! Teaching became not just a job that women are funneled into, but a vocation that compassionate and educated people devote their lives to and one I felt called to. Two years later, Mom was smiling, and I was a teacher!

You have both been teaching at schools founded and/or taught at by BVMs. Did you know the BVMs before?

Norm: Yes, I have a second cousin (Genevieve Freund) and a now deceased great aunt (Jean Freund) who are community members.

Marabeth: Yes, I was in the first grade class at Sacred Heart School in Maquoketa, Iowa, the year that the school opened. After moving to Dubuque, we enjoyed many holidays with Norm’s great aunt, Jean Freund.

Were there any BVMs who strengthened your desire to teach? Or mentored you? Or challenged you?

Norm: The correct answer is yes and just about all of them! Some of my best mentors have been Pat Nolan, Sara McAlpin, Marguerite Neumann, Mary Ellen Caldwell, and Catherine Dunn . . . I could go on and on!

Marabeth: This is one of those questions that I can answer by realizing that we live our lives forward, but understand them by looking backward. (I think that’s a paraphrase of Kierkegaard.)

At the time, I didn’t recognize her attention as something that gave me a desire to teach, it just made me feel special. Mary St. Owen, my sixth grade teacher at Sacred Heart, trusted me to do little jobs for her (like running the mimeograph machine!) and gave me challenging work to do. Memorizing and illustrating one poem each week was something I loved, and I still have some of them! Looking back, she was someone who helped me develop confidence and a desire to learn. I took those qualities into my teaching.

How has being an associate affected your teaching?

Norm: It has made me more aware of bringing the core values of freedom, education, charity, and justice to the forefront of what I do. It also has reinforced for me that teaching is more than a career, it is a calling . . . and one that asks you to go above and beyond the call of duty!

How has being an associate affected your relating to students?

Norm: Justice, in part, is how you treat that person right in front of you; it is recognizing the dignity and worth of every student and urging them onward with the values embraced by Clarke and the congregation.

Marabeth: Norm became an associate several years before I did, but I started my discernment about it then. During those years some things were happening that affected where, who, and how I was teaching.

The core values that I learned about first through Norm and then later during my “formal” discernment were very much a part of some decisions that I made about teaching during that time.

Very briefly, through an Ecumenical Emmaus weekend, my eyes were opened to see that there are children in Dubuque who are not Catholic, white, and middle class, and I felt called to teach in a school that would reach some of them.

It was a difficult and painful decision, but I decided to leave St. Anthony School and accepted a position in a public school that served some of those children I felt called to. Through my association and embracing the core values of freedom, education, charity, and justice, I taught at Marshall Elementary for seven years.

Then, in answer to a call to serve an even more marginalized population, I have been an English Language Learner (ELL) teacher for the last eight years. It has been rewarding and humbling to teach many children of immigrants (mostly Marshallese) and refugees, and come to know their families.

Why are you choosing to retire now?

Norm: While we originally planned to retire one year later, Marabeth’s health challenge of last summer was an

eye-opener regarding not taking the next stage of life for granted. We actually want to get to that next stage!

Marabeth: The time is right. We have grandchildren whom we love spending time with, a yearning to travel, and we are healthy enough to enjoy both!

Any plans for after retiring?

Norm: Many—more time with grandchildren, more travel (and, for the first time, not just in summers), volunteer work (at Clarke, for example), and I believe I have some more teaching left in me for Roberta Kuhn Center.