, 
Almost 70 years of classroom experience won’t be returning to Luverne Public Schools when just two longtime teachers decided to retire at the end of the 2015-16 school year.
Greg Antoine and Mary Jo Graphenteen chose early retirement after spending 32 and 36 years teaching in Luverne respectively.
Each decided it was time to start another chapter in their lives with one embracing the thought of retirement and the other doing so reluctantly.
Antoine came to a late decision about teaching
Antoine was almost through attending classes at the South Dakota State University School of Pharmacy when he decided to become a teacher.
Antoine’s dislike for making aspirin and cough syrup became a blessing for Luverne Public School officials and students when Antoine was hired as the ninth-grade science teacher 32 years ago after spending two years teaching at Amboy-Good Thunder.
“I couldn’t stand it,” he said of the thought of becoming a pharmacist. “I just couldn’t see myself standing in the back of a (drug) store.”
In the late ’70s and early ’80s when Antoine was a college student, a pharmacist’s only job was to dispense medications from a doctor’s written prescription. The filling of the medications was done in private, generally in a back work area of a drug store. Pharmacists then rarely engaged in face-to-face conversations with the patients as they do today.
Once he made the decision to quit pharmacy school, Antoine said he examined his completed classes from Southwest Minnesota State University in Marshall. It showed a plethora of biology, chemistry and other science classes. Against his parents’ wishes he pursued an education degree with an earth science minor.
Education wasn’t an unknown career field to Antoine, whose parents worked in education.
It was while he was a senior at Madelia High School that he met his wife, Barb, in a geometry class. He asked her to the homecoming dance.
The couple married in 1979. They have three grown children and five grandchildren.
On June 10, after hundreds of tests, lessons, lectures and the tennis season, the 59-year-old (his birthday was June 22) decided to call it quits.
“Some of the changes in the classroom I just don’t agree with,” Antoine said. “That’s the ‘old school’ coming out in me.”
The 2011 Teacher of the Year said his personal teaching philosophy centered on teaching students as a single group, practicing lessons together until they all understood. Today’s teaching is giving way to separate learning groups within the same classroom.
“It stops a group of kids from going forward,” he explained.
The forward movement may be what keeps ninth-graders in check.
“They are individuals full of energy and creativity. They can be a lot of fun,” Antoine said. “But if you get a group together, they can get rambunctious and make some poor choices.”
His science experiments and lessons focused on engaging the students in the development of positive life skills: cooperation, collaboration, teamwork, communication, critical thinking and problem solving.
Antoine explained the more skills a student develops the better the career choices and potential income.
“Become a good communicator and be good at whatever you’re doing in life,” he said.
While Antoine has retired as a full-time classroom teacher, he is prepared to continue service to the district as a substitute teacher and, if possible, as the district’s tennis coach. He also plans to join the other retired Luverne teachers in various activities including becoming a community volunteer.
Antoine said he and Barb will also continue make Luverne their home unless more traffic lights suddenly appear.
“I said when I retire I would never live in a town with more than two stoplights,” he said.
Graphenteen’s only career choice was to teach
Mary Jo Graphenteen believes one’s career path is determined by nature and not nurtured.
“I think you’re born with the ability to organize, teach or coach,” she said.
Experiences foster the ability, and Graphenteen knew as a sixth-grader at Luverne Public Schools she wanted to be a physical education and health teacher.
She attended the University of Minnesota-Morris for her teaching degree and completed her student teaching in Pipestone. She had no intentions of returning to Luverne until her husband, Steve, began working at the local radio station.
Graphenteen retired May 20 after teaching in Luverne for 36 years. This fall will be the first time her schedule won’t be guided by the ringing of a school bell.
“I have lived by the bell from the age of 5,” said Graphenteen, an LHS 1975 graduate. “I will not miss the regimen.”
Instead, Graphenteen’s time will be her own. While she has no specific plans, she is enjoying her normal summer routine of “coffee, run, garden, golf, repeat.”
“Every once in a while I throw in lawn mowing,” she added with a laugh.
Throwing retirement into her schedule this spring wasn’t an event Graphenteen had planned, but felt she needed to for her own health.
Three years ago during a middle school physical education class, she received a concussion, the effects of which continue to cause headaches and fatigue.
“I need to see how not working at all helps my head,” she said.
For the last 17 years of her teaching tenure Graphenteen taught middle school students, a task she embraced by making herself a better teacher. She spent 18 years teaching high school students and one year in the elementary.
Graphenteen said middle schoolers challenged her and she would often match their high energy levels by introducing them to a variety of activities.
Pickle ball, archery, dance, golf and bowling were among the vast array of sports Graphenteen brought to students. This fall she had planned to introduce how to use heart rate monitors.
“It would give them an opportunity to be active for the rest of their lives,” she said. “The core curriculum may be math, reading, science and social studies, but physical education is the core of living.”
Graphenteen experienced firsthand that it’s never too late to start activities. As an adult she started running and playing golf. In high school and college she played basketball, volleyball and tennis
Through her 36 years as a teacher, she has also been a basketball, volleyball, softball and track coach for Luverne, Adrian and Hills-Beaver Creek schools.
Now in retirement Graphenteen said she will enjoy attending spur-of-the-moment events with family members (the Graphenteens have two adult sons) or helping out the school district in some way.
“My plan is that I have no