La Salle Trinity teacher matches her 2nd grade students’ intensity

When Maggie Hachenberger met her husband, Justin, she simply knew. Though they had exchanged barely a word, Hachenberger intuited she’d met the one.

“I turned to my friend and I said, ‘I’m going to marry him,’” Hachenberger said. “People have asked me, ‘How did you know that?’ I just knew.”

So it was with her career in teaching. There was no standout day when young Margaret Marchesi suddenly decided she wanted to be a teacher. All along, she just knew.

“When people asked, ‘What are you going to do?’” Hachenberger said. “I said, ‘I’m going to teach.’”

Hachenberger works at Trinity Catholic Academy in La Salle, where she teaches second grade and more than matches her students in personal energy. She bounces from desk to desk – “I cannot sit,” she admits – and, for all her gifts, she acknowledges she would not have been successful as a classroom lecturer.

“That’s boring,” she said. “They don’t want to sit and hear me talk. I don’t want to hear me talk. My kids at home will tell you they don’t want to hear me talk.”

“Energetic” is a good word for Hachenberger’s teaching style, but one of her past principals said it’s her passion and caring nature that make her successful.

“The one thing that stands out about Maggie is as a first-year teacher she was a problem solver,” recalled Mary Ann Stefanelli, who had been principal at Peru Northview School when Hachenberger was a recent graduate. “She met every student’s needs, regardless of behavior or academic successes. She was right there. She never came to me with an issue.”

Diane Marchesi and her late husband Butch weren’t exactly shocked when Maggie gravitated toward the classroom. The Marchesi family made their home near Lincoln Junior High School and it was not uncommon for Maggie to show up at Lincoln’s door after dismissal to walk a group of schoolchildren over to Hegeler Park for play time.

And the apple didn’t roll far from the tree. John Hurst, a La Salle funeral director, had been one of Diane’s students in the 1970s. Diane was a “very strict” teacher – had to be, he admits, with him and his rowdy classmates – but Diane was dedicated and “I’m sure that Maggie wanted to follow in her mom’s footsteps.”

Hachenberger’s biggest influence, however, was Robert Manahan, her freshman English teacher at La Salle-Peru High School. She loved his passion and later signed up for Manahan’s elective Shakespeare class, even though she wasn’t terribly fond of the Bard.

After L-P, she enrolled at Illinois Valley Community College and then earned a bachelor’s degree in education from Illinois State University. She then was nudged into the elementary setting, where she thrived.

“I love, love being with the little ones,” Hachenberger said. “They share such cute stories and they love to learn.”

She also gravitated steadily toward smaller class sizes. She did her student teaching in Schaumburg with 28 sixth-graders. She jumped at a chance to return to the Illinois Valley and teach at Peru Elementary, with a more manageable 25 kids.

“You’re able to get to know their child and know their strengths and weaknesses. Also, the ones that are free to sail on their own, you can encourage that and allow it.”

Her last stop in the public school setting was at Dalzell, where the classes were even more intimate and thus more to her liking.

She switched to the parochial setting two years ago when she and her daughter Emelia went to a “last-chance Mass” Sunday night at Queen of the Holy Rosary Shrine. The Very Rev. Tom Otto announced Trinity needed a second-grade teacher and asked those in attendance to help spread the word.

Right then and there, Hachenberger knew.

“I turned to my daughter and said, ‘I’m going to apply for that,’” Hachenberger said.

She is kind, compassionate, and genuinely gives her all to her students and our school.”

—  Deb Myers, Trinity Catholic Academy principal

After Mass, Hachenberger headed for her car and almost walked past Father Tom, until Emilia nudged her to say something, “and within two weeks I had a job.”

The transition was seamless, TCA Principal Deb Myers said.

“Maggie truly is a blessing to our school,” Myers said. “Father Tom and I truly believe Maggie has a calling to be not just a teacher but a Catholic teacher.

“She is kind, compassionate, and genuinely gives her all to her students and our school.”

Her colleagues at Dalzell were not surprised she transitioned out of the public school system – Hachenberger had long professed an interest in parochial education – but longtime colleague Sharon Lamps was not at all happy saying goodbye.

“I was sad to lose her,” Lamps said. “We thought a lot alike and we worked very well together. There’s not a day goes by that somebody at Dalzell doesn’t mention Maggie. The kids loved her.”

And though she loved the kids in return, Hachenberger relished a parochial post because she believes public school teachers are over-regulated. She said she’s glad to be freed of Springfield’s mandates and, by extension, having the freedom to work one-on-one with her kids.

“When they’re in my room, they’re mine,” she said. “They can get all the love and attention they need.

“It was just my calling. This is where I’m supposed to be.”