Seurynck Delphi Community High School's U.S. history and psychology teacher Joseph "Joe" Seurynck will retire after 41 years of teaching at the end of the 2009 school year.

Seurynck has taught at DCHS for the past 38 years. During that time he has taught religion, sociology, psychology, U.S. history, world history, economics and government.

He has served as sponsor for the junior and senior classes, AFS, and Student Council, as well as being Academic Decathlon coach and sponsor, Academic Super Bowl coach and sponsor, football statistician, basketball scorer and statistician, track worker and assistant baseball coach.

"I wanted to be a teacher for most of my life," Seurnyck said. "I can remember playing school when I was very young. My parents, Thomas and Ottolynn Seurynck were both very supportive of my obtaining an education. They were close enough to being immigrants that they appreciated education as an opportunity which was not often offered in other countries."

Seurynck, a native of Marine City, Mich., graduated in 1960 from Holy Cross High School in Marine City. He graduated from St. Clair County Community College (Port Huron Junior College) with an Associate degree in liberal arts and an Associate degree in science.

In 1966 he graduated from the University of Notre Dame du Lac with a Bachelor of Arts degree in U.S. History and in 1967 with a Master of Arts degree in U.S. History with minors in philosophy, theology and world history.

He received the William Randolph Hearst Fellowship and earned education credits from Eastern Michigan University and studied social psychology and economics at Purdue University.

His teaching career began at Holy Cross High School in Michigan, where he taught for one year and then two years at St. Mary's High School in Mt. Clemens, Mich. He also served as the assistant principal at St. Mary's. He then came to Delphi.

"The great reward in teaching has been to see the personal growth in the students," he said. "To see young men and women whom you have had the privilege of teaching, loving and caring for their families and to realize that you have had some small part in it, is the most gratifying aspect of having been an educator. The most difficult aspect is to see your former students still struggling with life and to wonder if you might have been able to have made a difference. In the end, it is best neither to take all of the credit nor all of the blame, if you wish to sleep at night.

"People often comment to me that the present students have changed so much. For better or worse they still look and act like many of the friends with whom I went to school. They are really not all that different. They are just children and "adults in various stages of developing." If you wish to start with a finished product, you had better look for another line of work. By the way, many of these young ladies and gentlemen are facing and coping with problems of which we never ever dreamt.

"The greatest change in teaching itself has come by way of paperwork and documentation. Teachers have always been accountable, but mostly to the parents. Now it seems that the teachers and the schools are mostly accountable to some government agency. I find it depersonalizing. If teaching is anything, it is an interpersonal relationship.

"I have written a piece for the Parnassus, our school newspaper. In that article I emphasized the need to 'respect' yourself and others. Many of the greatest problems of the world result from a failure to respect each other. If you can have the humility to accept the absolute equality of human beings as they stand before Almighty God, you are on the right road.

"On the other hand, I have learned much from my students. They keep you humble, It is humbling, as I have observed many times in my teaching career, looking out at a class and realizing that there are many of them who are more intellectually talented than you are. Yet, you are called upon to help them develop all of that talent. It also becomes clear that many have exceptional talents in other areas where you have little talent yourself. You also help them by encouraging those unique talents and personal characteristics.

"Delphi Community School Corporation has been a wonderful place to work. I have had the honor to teach with an exceptional staff throughout my tenure here. As I write that sentence, their names and faces run through my mind. A smile comes across my face as I fondly remember them. I learned more about teaching from them than from any education professor in my training.

"I have been fortunate to work for administrators who have, for the most part, had the best interests of the students in mind. They have tried to bring them the best education possible and the success of our student body bears testimony to the effectiveness of the educational curriculum at Delphi. They were not perfect but that has kept all of us humble.

Seurynck's wife, Kay, is trained as a teacher and social worker. He credits her honesty as balancing his life and enlightening his mind.

"She has in many ways been my 'master teacher,'" he said. "I hope this is true of all marriages. She has been a great blessing to me in my career."

Seurynck said their retirement plans include a possible move to the Holy Cross Retirement Village across from the University of Notre Dame in South Bend. They have a retirement community, an assisted living facility and a nursing home.

"We would surely miss the people of Delphi but would be closer to our son, Thomas, and the grandchildren," Seurynck said. "Of course these plans would all depend upon being able to sell our house and close things here."

The Seuryncks have one son, Thomas, also a graduate of Notre Dame, as well as a graduate of the University of Chicago. He and his wife, Margaret, are the parents of two daughters, Caitlin Rose, who is almost four, and Alyssa Grace, who is almost two. There will be a new little one who is expected in October.

"I would like to thank all of my former students and their relatives who have made such kind comments to me about my career here," Seurynck added. "These are more important to me than any type of socially perfunctory comments that sometimes go with retirement. I also hope that all who may feel that I have not been what their particular child needed will forgive me for my own human weakness. There was, after all, only one perfect teacher. This saying was found on a teacher's desk at an academic competition by my wife:"

Teaching is a partnership with God. You are not molding iron; nor chiseling marble. You are working with the Creator of the Universe in shaping human character and determining human destiny."