Four teachers with a combined 131 years of teaching experience are retiring at the end of the school year from the Tippecanoe Valley School Corporation. The four were honored May 8 by the board of trustees.
They are Lois Ann Buss, Tippecanoe Valley High School language teacher, Kim Eiser, Mentone Elementary first grade teacher, Brenda Vanlaningham, Mentone Elementary kindergarten teacher, and Doug Heinold, Tippecanoe Valley High School industrial technology teacher.
“Teaching allows me to impact the lives of young people, and even to sometimes save a life,” said Buss, who started teaching at Tippecanoe Valley in 1980.
She will also begin teaching French part time at Grace College this fall.
Eiser completes a 35-year teaching career at Tippecanoe Valley, starting just a few months after graduating from Indiana State University.
“The most important rewards are the lifetime connections that I have made with my students and colleagues,” said Eiser, who plans to travel, read more and possibly substitute teach during retirement.
Vanlaningham spent 28 years teaching at Tippecanoe Valley.
“I could not have asked for more from the kind, caring, fellow teachers here. Thank you is not enough for this great group of colleagues,” she says.
Vanlaningham doesn’t have any immediate plans for retirement yet, but says she would like to take more mission trips in the future.
“I guess once a teacher, always a teacher! Maybe just in a different capacity or country,” she said.
Heinold says he will miss all of the people at Tippecanoe Valley the most.
“I have worked with a lot of great people from administrators to students during my time here. I hope that I will never forget all of the good times that I have had from the classroom to the field. Tippecanoe Valley has been a great place to teach and coach all of these years,” he explains. “I hope to be able to consider myself a Tippecanoe Valley Viking for life.”
