Teachers have the power to mold, inspire and shape our youngsters. We are the products of yesterdays teachers. For the teachers in the one-room school houses that surrounded the Lake Zurich area, the teaching profession was challenging. Being a teacher was also a good career for young women, before marriage.

As a teacher in a one-room school, you were the captain of the ship. You were usually not much older than the children you were teaching. Your duties included the jobs of superintendent, janitor, teacher, principal, and physical education expert.

The Lake Zurich area was home to 10 one-room schools which were eventually consolidated in 1946. Sarah Adams, Lucretia Freeman, and Rue Fisher were some of the first teachers in these schools. In 1861, it was recorded that Ms. Fisher received $19.00 each month in salary. Sarah Adams taught at the Windmill Hill School on the south side of Lake Zurich in 1862. She earned $32.92 in her first year of teaching.

Another early teacher in Lake Zurich was May Whitney. May taught from 1888, when she graduated from Barrington High School, until she married Orman Rockenbach in 1897. May recalled her early years, which were included by Robert Snetsinger in his book Kiss Clara For Me (Carnation Press, 1969): "In the fall of 1888, Mr. Harrower came to see my father about getting me to teach at the Honey Lake School. There was a little log school house just at the entrance of the Rainbow Farm. It was very old with four tiny windows. There was a homemade desk for the teacher and twenty homemade, much carved desks for the pupils. One morning when I came to school there was a wise old owl figurine sitting on my desk. I considered his being there a symbol of my good teaching."

In later years, May taught at the Long Grove Archer School on Old Hicks Road. Her contribution to educating the towns children was recognized when the new elementary school in 1960 was named after her.

Virginia Sigwalt of Lake Zurich taught at the Long Grove School, part of which still remains on the comer of Route 83 and Arlington Heights Road. Virginia graduated from the first graduating class of the newly built Lake Zurich High School in 1929. After attending Northern University in DeKalb in 1932, she started teaching in Long Grove. She taught for five years before she married in 1940.

One of Virginia's early students, Dorothy Wickersheim remembered Virginia well. Virginia headed the local 4-H program for girls called the "Sewing Sally's". Dorothy said, "Virginia taught me how to make my first pair of britches. And ... she had her own car that she drove to school. For a single woman to be driving her own car in the 1930s, well... she was something."

Times have changed. These days over fifty-six percent of the teachers have master's degrees in education. There are approximately 3,424 students in District 95's six schools which serve Lake Zurich. The average class size is 25 students and teachers average $41,000 in salary. All those students and the teachers still possess the power to mold, inspire, and affect eternity.