‘Kids keep you young.’

Reiter retires after 24 years with Brandon Valley schools

 

After 24 years of teaching elementary school, Peggy Reiter will miss the kids.

“Just the funny little things they can come up with. Some of the stuff that goes through their minds is amazing,” said Reiter, who retires this spring from teaching fourth grade at Fred Assam Elementary.

She taught two years at Valley Springs Elementary and 11 at Brandon Elementary before joining the staff at FAE in 2009.

One year, she was presenting a math lesson she was especially excited about. When she paused to ask if there were any questions, a boy raised his hand and asked, “How do you get your hair to look the same every day?”

“And here I thought it was all about math,” Reiter said with a laugh.

Last year, she had a student from Nepal. After having the student several months, she asked him casually, “So what brought you here?” 

“One day an elephant crashed through our home, and my father said, ‘It’s time to go,’” the boy replied. 

“They’re so honest,” Reiter said. “They love you. It’s hard to leave them each year, but you have to.”

Highlights from her 24 years in the Brandon Valley School District include coaching freshman girls’ golf – “fun, but challenging,” Reiter said – and seeing a student get a perfect score on the Dakota Step test.

After staying home several years with her own children, she went back to school to finish her education degree and get her Master’s. She worked intermittently at Hidden Valley Golf Course and nurseries while raising her brood of three, and got her own start in working with kids as a babysitter.

“I’ve been working since I was 12,” Reiter, 67, admitted. “I’m ready to relax, take some time for my own family.”

In retirement, she hopes to be busy with her five grandchildren, and maybe do some golfing and camping. She’s most looking forward to a lifestyle in which she doesn’t have to be on a schedule. 

Reiter hopes her students will remember her as kind and caring – not only about their academic success, but also beyond the classroom. 

“You do care about what happened to them last night or over the weekend. You’re their friend, but you have to be firm,” she said. “I’ll miss being with kids on a daily basis. Kids keep you young.”