Anyone who enters Marilyn Lindeman’s prekindergarten classroom at St. Andrews Lutheran School in Park Ridge becomes one of her cherubs. That honor entitles you to a hug every morning and whenever else you need one. It’s a reciprocal arrangement, according to the 37-year teaching veteran. “That’s how I get my energy,” she said.
It must work, because Lindeman is on the move every minute as she educates and inspires her young charges.
Last June, that commitment was recognized when Lindeman, a Des Plaines resident, was honored with one of five Kohl/McCormick Early Childhood Teaching Awards given each year by the Dolores Kohl Education Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Tribune Foundation. Winners, all of whom teach in the Chicago metropolitan area, receive $5,000 and are inducted into the Kohl Academy of Outstanding Teachers.
Lana Weiner, executive director of the Kohl/McCormick Early Childhood Teaching Awards, said Lindeman was chosen because “she is absolutely tireless in her devotion to children and families.”
More than 1,000 early childhood teachers were nominated for Kohl/McCormick awards by parents, colleagues and administrators. Lindeman was nominated by W. James Kirchhoff, superintendent of schools for the Northern Illinois District of the Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod. “She has been a great blessing to our Lutheran schools,” Kirchoff wrote in his nominating letter, “and has gained a very positive notoriety over these years for her dedicated service.”
Winners were selected based on a personal essay, letters of recommendation, individual interviews and site visits by authorities on early childhood education.
Spending an afternoon in Lindeman’s classroom is to enter a world where children know they are loved unconditionally but don’t consider that a challenge to test the limits. The students quietly sit around pint-sized tables. Each patiently waits for a classmate who is celebrating her birthday to serve the cupcakes her mother had baked for the occasion. Lindeman reminds them that they have three choices. They can say, “May I try a little piece?” “Yes, please,” or “No, thank you.”
Giving children options is an important element of Lindeman’s teaching technique. She said children must know that “there are a lot of choices, but for every choice comes a responsibility.” The birthday girl is allowed to decide whether the children will visit with each other or listen to a record while they eat their snack.
During playtime, children choose the toys they want–and with whom they want to play. A number of them work together to convert some jumbo blocks into an imaginative passenger train. When Lindeman begins playing a tune on the piano, the children immediately put away the toys they have taken out.
The prize-winning teacher doesn’t miss an opportunity to work on skill building. She asks two boys who are returning a marble game to count the number of marbles out loud as they hand them to her.
She also takes time to work on religious development. “I want them to know there’s a loving God that made them,” Lindeman said. “When they’re sorry, they know that they’re forgiven. But `forgiven’ doesn’t mean that the consequence is not there.”
Diane Finney of Park Ridge has been Lindeman’s teaching aide for 17 years. One of Finney’s sons and her daughter attended Lindeman’s prekindergarten class. “She changed my son so much in one year,” Finney said. After her daughter completed prekindergarten, Finney began working as a volunteer. Six years later, she became a paid employee.
“She’s not only my coworker and my boss, but she’s such a good friend,” Finney said of Lindeman. “What a wonderful person, and what a witness of God. She has an abundance of energy, and she gives it all to (the children).”
Principal Al Schattschneider praised Lindeman’s “commitment to the ministry of teaching children. Her objective is to take them from this isolated stage that those young children are in and to try to make them part of a group.” He noted that she never misses an opportunity to teach them about the Lutheran religion and to let them know that “there are rules, and there are consequences.”
Schattschneider said the school, which has 239 students in prekindergarten through 8th grade, has received numerous phone calls since Lindeman won the award. “It has given us the opportunity to tell people why we’re here,” he said.
Lindeman, who began her teaching career in Iowa, has taught kindergarten through 3rd grade in her career. In 1968, she was working as a consultant to Northwestern University on a project to create programs to improve teachers’ skills and to develop materials for “ungraded” programs, in which students move through skill levels rather than being clustered by age. The principal of St. Andrews Lutheran School at that time called and asked her to create a prekindergarten program for the school.
As she worked on the program with a committee, Lindeman kept asking the principal when a teacher was going to be hired to implement it. He responded, “The Lord will provide.” Lindeman finally agreed to be the “sacrificial lamb” because she thought it might be fun initiating the program she had developed.
“That short-term, coming-to-help is now in its 30th year,” she said. “So needless to say, I love it.”
Since she joined the St. Andrews faculty, Lindeman has earned a graduate degree in early childhood education from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her many professional activities include serving as northern Illinois district consultant for early childhood education for the Lutheran schools for 26 years. A year ago, the Northern Illinois District of the Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod, chose Lindeman as Teacher of the Year.
Lindeman lives in Des Plaines with her husband, Bill, who retired two years ago as director of media after working at Maine Township High School for 35 years. The Lindemans have two grown children and two grandchildren.
As the afternoon prekindergarten session ends, parents gather outside the room to wait for their children. They praise Lindeman’s methods and manner.
“She seems to have such a happy rapport with the children,” said Leslie Meyer of Mt. Prospect.
Ann Coulson of Park Ridge said: “She loves them, but she’s in charge too. It’s a good classroom experience for them.”
Sandy Henley of Park Ridge called Lindeman’s classroom “a wonderful learning environment.”
“She’s a very positive teacher,” added Jan Bennett of Park Ridge.
Lindeman likes to talk with the parents when they come to collect their children. “That gives you an opportunity to interact and to tell the cute things (the children have) done,” Lindeman said. “Rarely do I tell them the behavioral problems . . . because we can work those out in no time.”
Receiving a Kohl/McCormick Early Childhood Teaching Award has meant a lot to Lindeman because “it’s not just a reward–it’s a promotion of early childhood.” She added that unlike some awards, which lead to a sabbatical, with this one “you don’t have to give up what you love doing.”
Lindeman also praised the interaction she is having with the foundation as an award-winner. Because of the awards program, Lindeman said, “People see that education is important at an early age. How we treat people, and how we train people, (as preschoolers) is going to make a big difference in their success later.”
