Published: May 18, 2009 03:13 pm      

Outgoing St. Camillus principal and sister making a change

By Carl Keith Greene / Staff Writer

Things will change at St. Camillus Academy as this academic year comes to an end.

Sister Juanita Nadicksbernd, principal for the past eight years, will turn the office keys over to the new principal, Patty Beckert, and make a bit of a change in her life.

After 51 years as a teacher and principal in the Congregation of Divine Providence, she’s not leaving the Sisters, but is “going to take some time off.”

“Nobody just stops,” she added. “I will find something to do after I take a couple of months just to kind of rejuvenate and refresh myself, time to pray and read and rest.”

Sister Juanita was born just before World War II began. She grew up in Dayton, Ky., on the Ohio River and is one of six children — two boys and four girls — whose great-grandparents came from Germany.

One of her brothers and one of her sisters each married and have families.

She and her two older sisters became Divine Providence sisters with the Catholic church, and her other brother became a priest.

She explained her entry as a Sister of Divine Providence this way: “It’s a calling. For people called for a vocation or a mission in life, it’s just a calling. You respond or you don’t respond.”

For the past 51 years, she’s responded to the call.

She spent more than 30 years as a principal in elementary schools and the other years a teacher.

Her relationship with the Divine Providence sisters started early, when she spent grades one through eight in a school operated by the order.

In the past eight years at St. Camillus, she’s seen lots of changes. A new house for the sisters was built and the 1914 building was torn down. A new academic building was also built with four classrooms and a cafeteria.

But the traditions of the school have little changed.

“We try to keep up with educational trends, whatever they may be,” she said. But the school sticks to the basics and doesn’t change just for the sake of change, she emphasized.

Enrollment, which has been up and down over her tenure, is down just a bit at about 160 students in the 10 levels of preschool, kindergarten and grades one through eight.

This year, the school has been named campus of the year by PRIDE. Money from the program has funded two wetlands, a butterfly garden, a greenhouse, nature trail and two tracking boxes.

Tracking boxes give the students an introduction to animals that live in the area. They are filled with sand, and food is put in them daily. The next morning, students check the tracks in the sand and determine what kind of animals ate the food.

The highlight of her past half-century in education “is working with kids.”

“I won’t miss the paperwork, the administration or the pressure of getting things done on time,” she said. “I will miss the kids, though I’ve worked with kids 51 years and I’ve enjoyed that, always.”

The change “doesn’t mean that I won’t work with kids again. I may very well work with kids again, just in a different capacity, even as a teacher. I like teaching,” she said, adding, that she would do it all over again if she had the chance.

St. Camillus students are different from the students with whom she worked in Newport before coming to Corbin, she said.

“They know what we expect of them and they respond. If you place your expectations and goals, and the kids know what they are, usually they will respond accordingly,” she said.

She said Tri-County parents’ interest in education motivates the students.

“There is a simplicity about the students that you don’t find in more sophisticated areas,” she said, adding that when you put the simplicity and the motivation together. “you have a good school.”

St. Camillus, she said, is often thought of as a school for the wealthy.

“That is not true,” she said.

She said the school has students from all socioeconomic levels.

“We do offer scholarships for students. Some students wouldn’t be here if not for scholarships to help them.”

Looking forward for the school, she said “I’m very pleased,” with the choice of Beckert, who is not a sister with the church, as the new principal.

“The first time I met her, I was very pleased with her. The more that I’m with her, the more I think she will be very good for St. Camillus. I’m very pleased and very hopeful,” she said.

The Sisters of Divine Providence came to Corbin in 1908 and operated a school affiliated with the Catholic church here, called the Sacred Heart School.

In 1914, the order acquired more than 30 acres of land and built a building for a school and a place for the sisters to live.

It operated a high school until 1996.