Holy Trinity School to celebrate veteran teacher this Sunday

LACONIA — Karen Sullivan had started her teaching career in public schools, then took some time off when her daughters were young. When she went back to work, it was at Holy Trinity School, which her children attended. It wasn’t necessarily her plan to finish her career as a private school teacher, but that’s exactly what happened.

After this school year, Sullivan will retire after 22 years at the Catholic school on the corner of Church and Messer streets. Holy Trinity will be holding a retirement celebration for Sullivan on Sunday, May 6, 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. in the school’s gymnasium.

Sullivan grew up in Revere, Massachusetts, and earned her undergraduate degree in education from Boston College. Her roommate at BC was from Laconia, which is how she met her husband, Kevin Sullivan, a Laconia native who was studying at Plymouth State College, as it was then known.

The Sullivans settled in Laconia after graduation, and she began teaching at local elementary schools. She paused her career for eight years to have three children, and there wasn’t a question of where those girls would go to school. Kevin had gone to Holy Trinity School, and his mother was a teacher there.

When her youngest was old enough for school, Sullivan decided to renew her certification and get back into the classroom. She kept herself open to all possibilities, substitute teaching wherever she was needed, but when the job for a first-grade teacher opened up at Holy Trinity, she went for it. She taught two years in first grade, two years in third grade, and 14 years as the fifth grade teacher. Sullivan is currently in the school’s middle school, where she teaches religion, math and social studies to sixth-, seventh- and eighth-graders.

Looking back on her career, Sullivan said there was a point where she realized that she would never need to think about finding another teaching job.

“You become part of a community, you become part of a culture, it’s where you feel comfortable. I always felt that I was able to challenge myself without leaving this school,” she said. “I just decided to bloom where I was planted.”

And bloom she did, especially when she began teaching older students.

“It was when I was teaching fifth grade that I realized that my passion was teaching social studies,” she said. Sullivan went back to school and earned her master’s from Plymouth State University in 2008.

Sullivan’s passion for social studies was exemplified by the school’s involvement in the National History Day, a contest run by a nonprofit organization that challenges students to spend an entire academic year on a history project. Those projects are brought to a local competition, with the best of each bunch moving on to the national event held in Maryland.

Holy Trinity, despite its small size, is a perennial favorite to send projects to Maryland. Sullivan said one reason for that is because the History Day projects are baked into the curriculum for the seventh and eighth grade, whereas other schools usually treat it as an after-school club.

“It’s a serious time commitment to do a good project,” she said. But, as students in the younger grades see the success that their older classmates achieve, they know that their time will soon come to carry on the school’s tradition.

“Right from the first day of seventh grade, they’re excited for the challenge of the History Day project.”

As someone whose career has spanned both the public and private school systems, Sullivan is convinced that both are necessary.

“I think that free public education is the best invention that came out of the invention of the United States of America,” she said. “But, I do think that it’s important for people to have options. I also think that it’s important for people of the Catholic faith to have an option to educate their children in a system that is consistent with their faith.”

Not every family that chooses Holy Trinity does so for religious reasons, she said. Often, though, becoming part of the Holy Trinity community brings families closer to the church. Sullivan saw that in her own life, how her family’s church attendance became more regular once her daughters were in school. She has also seen how a Catholic point of view can work in an educational environment.

When she first brought her daughters to Holy Trinity, the Catholic element was comfortable and comforting to her, she said, but that wasn’t why she chose it.

“It wasn’t until I started working here that I realized how important it is to the culture of the school.” She now jokes that she doesn’t know how to teach “without Mary and Jesus in your back pocket.”

If there’s a behavioral issue, she said it’s very useful to pull a student aside and invoke a higher power.

“‘Let’s think about what Jesus teaches us to do, let’s calm down and ask the Blessed mother to help us with this.’ It might help children to see their behavior on a different level.”

For several years, both she and her husband had planned to retire by the time they turned 64 – she’s 63 right now. Her last act as a teacher will be to chaperone her students to the National History Day event in Maryland this June.

This will be the last full school year that will see Holy Trinity at the Messer and Church corner. Mid-way through next year, the school will move to the Saint Andre Bessette campus, at the corner of Union and Gilford avenues.

“It seems like with the school transitioning, it seems like a good time for someone new to come in,” Sullivan said. “I feel like it’s good timing.”

She won’t disappear, though. She serves on the parish’s building committee, and would be happy to help her replacement, such as with the National History Day program.

“I hope to continue to be involved with the school and the students,” she said, adding, “Just on my time and my schedule.”