By CRISTINA JANNEY
Hays Post
Shirley Dinkel, a 39-year veteran of Catholic education in Hays, said she knew since she was in the second grade she wanted to be a teacher.
Dinkel was one of 11 children from a poor farming family. Her family had no books in their house.
“I passed first grade without knowing my alphabet — not knowing anything that letters made sounds and sounds made words and words made sentences and sentences made stories because no one had ever read me a story,” she said.
Dinkel’s second-grade teacher, Sister Eloise, figured out on the first day Shirley was struggling.
When the children did circle time, Sister Eloise would sit Shirley next to her knee. She would ask one of the students a question and then ask Shirley if it was correct. In this way, Shirley learned to memorize what words meant, how to sound out words and what numbers meant.
Sister Eloise would grab Dinkel by the chin, look into her eyes and say, “You’re so cute.” For Shirley, who was a shy, scared little girl, this built her self-esteem and confidence.
“I would have walked on water for her,” she said. “She built up my self-esteem so that I thought I was a princess.”
Dinkel cried all through the summer when she had to leave second grade and Sister Eloise, but all her life she thought she would emulate Sister Eloise. She would be a teacher.
She entered a convent after college with the hopes of being a nun and a teacher. After the two years, the sisters decided she needed more maturity before she could continue, so they sent her home. She enrolled at Fort Hays State University to finish her final two years of college and worked two jobs to pay her way through college and repay the convent for her first two years of school.
In a strange twist, Dinkel would meet her beloved teacher again in her senior year at FHSU as her student teaching mentor. Eloise had left the sisterhood, was married, still working as a teacher and was known as Esther Morris. The two developed a lifelong friendship.
Dinkel, 68, is married, has four children, nine grandchildren and estimates she has taught 1,200 children in her career first at St. Joseph Catholic School and then at Holy Family Elementary School. She is now teaching fifth- and sixth-grade reading and religion.
She was selected as the Hays Post’s first Teacher of the Month from more than 40 nominees. She was nominated by four different people.
Dinkel said she tries to honor those principles Sister Eloise taught her. She spends Sunday afternoons planning out her week and constantly is thinking how she can help each individual student improve. She teaches under the motto: “There is nothing more unequal than the equal treatment of unequals.”
“I can never tailor my lessons or my expectations so that it is a cookie-cutter approach,” she said. “Some of them, the way they learn is different from anyone else. The way they think is unlike anyone else. What their life experiences are is different.”
Parent Sandee Werth said her son was the recipient of some of Dinkel’s extra attention and love. After her 12-year-old tore his ACL and needed surgery, he was out of school for two weeks and had a lot of homework to complete. Dinkel worked with Werth’s son for a full nine weeks until he was caught up.
“She would work with him every free moment she had,” Werth said. “I respect and love this lady for everything she has done for him as well as other students. The children who leave Holy Family know she truly loves them. Her faith in God shines through as the children work monthly with Tiger Tots and Good Samaritan residents. She demonstrates how to be more God like in all we do. …
“We love her for the caring, joyous, smart and fair teacher she has been to so many of her students.”
Kellie Lee had Dinkel as a teacher and now her daughter is the second generation to go through Dinkel’s classes.
“She is amazing,” she said in her nomination. “The stories she tells the kids makes the information they are learning stick with them, and the love for Jesus she plants in their hearts sticks with them for a lifetime.”
When she was embarking on her first year of teaching, Dinkel felt lost as to how to get the school year started. She sought the advice of fellow teacher Joyce Jilg.
Dinkel related Jilg’s advice, “Tell them about yourself. Find out who they are. What do they love? What makes them happy? And develop a family. This is your family for a whole year. Whatever you do, never waste their time and don’t let them waste your time.”
She took this advice to heart and promises her students every year she will not waste one moment of their time and she asks the same of them. If she finishes a lesson early, she challenges the students to a riddle, tells a story or they discusses events in the news.
Dinkel said she could not pick one memory as a favorite from her many years of teaching.
“Every day is a happy,” she said. “Even the hard days are happy days because they help me grow, and they help me reach and be a better person. I am the person I am because every day mattered so much.”
Dinkel has taught religion for 19 years. Alongside an extensive collection of bright yellow Disney Minions, her room is decorated with religious iconography — Mother Mary, angels and crosses.
“What I try to instill in them is to have a relationship with God,” she said. “I want you to be so passionate that God has a plan on my head. He has given me the time and the talents to achieve something that no one else will ever be able to achieve to the best of the ability that I can. I want to fulfill that plan.”
She said she tries to lead by example showing the children the importance of doing for the needy and raising money for charity.
“If lives are not changed and all you are is saying words, it is kind of like pebbles in a 10-gallon container,” she said. “It rattles. It is not sound teaching unless there is action behind it.”
The reason Sister Eloise was so successful with Shirley is she connected and she loved, Dinkel said.
“There has to be a heart connection. If you never meet their hearts, you are never going to meet their minds,” she said.
Although Dinkel is past retirement age, she is not ready to quit teaching any time soon. She just loves her job too much. She said she is happiest when she was teaching.
“God has to decide that and make it very clear that it is time — that it is time to do something else,” Dinkel said of her retirement. “But he better open the door and push me through, because I am staying put here until he makes it very clear it is time for me to do something else.
“I tell myself that this is never going to be a job,” she said. “It is a ministry and a passion. It is a privilege to work with children. Every morning when I wake up I say, ‘Thank you Lord for my job. Thank you for my family. Thank you for my home and my car. Thank you for me being able to pay my bills.’ I am living every minute of the journey.”