Connie Grohoski always knew her son Max was the only one in the family who knew how to eat using chopsticks, but until recently she never knew where he picked up that skill. It turns out, it was his third grade teacher at St. John Vianney, Tracy Shaft.
Grohoski had a unique perspective on what made Shaft an exceptional teacher. They worked alongside each other as teachers at St. John Vianney for years, but she also got to experience that relationship as a parent. And one theme throughout Shaft’s career was her constant attention to detail that provided her students with exposure to many different skills and talents that would serve them throughout their lives.
“There was a book (in her class) about how to use chopsticks, and he said that’s where he learned,” Grohoski said. “She was just the kind of teacher that you always remember. Even after she had Max, she would always ask me questions about him and how he was doing. That’s just so nice for kids to have that. I think she made a big impact on a lot of kids.”
Shaft, who taught at St. John Vianney for 25 years, died in February after a lengthy battle with an illness. But she leaves behind an incredible legacy as an educator and mentor in Flint who grew close with thousands of students and families during her career.
Grohoski taught third grade with Shaft for about 10 years as teaching partners before moving on to other grades. They formed a close friendship and even lived near each other in Flint’s College Cultural Neighborhood. Part of what Shaft loved about teaching, and what many students and parents vividly remember about her even years after being in her class, was how she found different ways to connect with and reach students no matter what their needs were. That, in part, was rooted in her own early experiences as a student.
“She always said that she wasn’t a great student growing up, so I think she really understood kids that had different problems in school,” Grohoski said. “That was her thing. She really figured out how to get to kids. She really liked to be able to reach the kid that was a little bit harder to work with, she liked getting to them and just teaching them.”
Mary Jo Kietzman, whose daughter Katya had Shaft in third grade more than a decade ago, still recalls Shaft’s talent for connecting with students in a way that resonated with third graders. On one occasion, Shaft helped deliver an important lesson about honesty.
“One day we sat down with my daughter, she and I, after the school day, and Ms. Shaft just explained to her why it is so important to be honest and tell the truth, and that it’s important for developing trust,” Kietzman said. “And when people can’t trust you, then you’re not really on firm ground with them. It was just the way she spoke to a third grader that made such an impression, like she was so understanding, but also firm and very serious. That forever kind of just made me feel like, wow, that is a teacher who’s doing a fine job.”
The Oregon Trail
Shaft was famous for her creativity as a teacher, and making concepts in the classroom come to life. The most visible of those lessons was her annual and beloved Oregon Trail unit.
While learning about early pioneers, challenges and pitfalls they experienced on the Oregon trail, food they ate, how they dressed, and other historical information, students literally brought those elements to life. And they did it through the streets of the Mott Park Neighborhood right next door to the school. Students would dress up in clothes of the era, they’d make their own covered wagons, and they’d parade through the neighborhood while learning about a famous era in American history. They’d also invite other classes and people from the school to attend and participate.
“She must have done that for 15 years,” Grohoski said. “The kids had such great memories of it. She really got students to have experiences.”
Elena Uppman, a former student, vividly remembers that and many other experiential lessons from her time in Shaft’s class. She also experienced another skill that Shaft had – getting parents involved. Uppman’s dad knew how to make hardtack biscuits, a simple and sustainable cracker made from flour, wheat, and salt. It was a staple part of nourishment during the Oregon Trail era because it was simple to make and lasted a long time. He made the crackers for kids in her class to try during the lesson.
“I actually have no idea how that even came about or how she got my dad to do that,” Uppman said. “We spent a good amount of time on the Oregon Trail. We made dolls out of clothes pins that matched the pioneers, and then we made the wagons, and there were so many steps in the buildup to the final actual Oregon Trail, and parents got to come and watch.”
That lesson may have been the most visible, but the intent and creativity behind it was a constant in everything she taught. She incorporated different types of life skills into many aspects of her classroom, including economics lessons where students worked together to get a $200 loan from the church, bought products to sell at lunch, set prices for them, and then repaid the loan from their profits.
“She had us build a business basically,” Uppman said. “We came up with a name, we came up with what we were going to sell, and then we had to open the store. That definitely left a lasting impression. You learn about the responsibility and attention you need to work as a group, and to have a give and take on your ideas or follow someone else’s idea who’s maybe better. It builds confidence, like, ‘This sounds hard, but once I’m actually doing it, it’s achievable.’”
Her Own Creative Side
Outside of the classroom, Shaft had a life full of her own creative pursuits. She loved the beach – Grohoski noted that she was able to go on a dream trip to Jamaica two years ago. She also loved working in her garden, family game nights, reading, and Bob Seger music, among other things.
But Shaft also found a passion that forced her to switch roles from teacher to student: she spent many years taking pottery lessons at the Flint Institute of Arts.
“She was really committed to her teaching, which was all day long, and then she took night classes while she was teaching, so it was a long day,” said Guy Adamec, who has taught pottery and clay classes at the FIA for decades. “In the summer she was always thrilled because she could switch to afternoon classes and got to be in here with a different group. She loved that, ‘Oh boy, in summers I get to be here all day.’”
Adamec said that the classes she took allowed Shaft to have a creative outlet and be a part of a close community of people who pursue a passion together.
“She wasn’t coming here to learn to be a professional, she just thoroughly enjoyed the process of making things with her hands,” Adamec said. “It was an outlet for her. You could see she loved doing that. And I think another thing that she liked here was the diversity of the people in these classes. There’s a little of everything, and there’s no judgment in these classes. People can sit here and make whatever they want and they don’t have to be self-conscious about it. My Monday class is a group of people who have been together for years, and they just look forward to seeing each other each week.”
Many of the things she created in the classes ended up as gifts to others. Adamec said she was working on projects right up until she became too sick to continue.
“She was a religious person, and people have the opportunity to express themselves in a unique, very personal way, so she actually made crosses out of clay and then decorated them and fired them and gave them to people. It was a really personal thing that she could do (for others),” Adamec said. “People understand that you put effort into this, and there’s a beauty in that that’s unique.”
Adamec said that she’d started some pieces last fall and she asked if he’d glaze them for her because she wasn’t sure she’d be able to come in and finish them.
“She said she wanted them to be given to her family,” Adamec said. “She was just a really nice person.”
Grohoski also said Shaft was thinking of others even as her health was getting worse late in her life. She asked for help following up with two of her former students.
“She stayed in touch with a lot of kids,” Grohoski said. “She told me about these letters that she got from two girls last spring, and it was during teacher appreciation week or something where they wrote letters to a former teacher. They were kids from Powers. And she had made the girls these crosses. And then just a couple weeks before she died, she couldn’t write with her right hand. She had cards that she wanted to put special messages in, and she had me write the messages and get them to these girls, so I took them and I had them delivered to Powers.”
True Care for Others
Candid Taylor’s daughter Chandler was brand new to St. John Vianney three years ago, and Shaft was her first teacher.
“She was just so nurturing and so supportive,” Taylor said. “She communicated with us all the time, especially in the car line. She would always come to the car and just kind of give me a brief, like ‘hey, she had a great day.’ It was just so endearing. And with it being my daughter’s first year at St. John Vianney, she found different ways to kind of plug Chandler into the school community, suggesting she be on student government and things like that. She helped her build her confidence. She was just such an endearing spirit.”
Kietzman said that Shaft seemed to have a great sense for the types of support or reassurance kids needed, and could adapt to provide it.
“I asked my daughter this morning what she remembered about her,” Kietzman said. “She said, ‘I went to Ms. Shaft because I was scared that I had to have my first fillings and I didn’t want to go to the dentist.’ And apparently Ms. Shaft loved Jolly Ranchers and gave them out as treats for kids. And she told my daughter, ‘When you get through this, I’ll have a surprise put together for you.’ So she really knew what was going on in their lives. She knew what they were struggling with, and she found ways of addressing that.”
Taylor’s daughter only spent one year at St. John Vianney because the family moved to Atlanta for a career opportunity. But every time they came back to Flint after moving, Shaft’s classroom was a priority to try and visit.
“It says something about the school culture, that it is family-oriented and community-oriented,” Taylor said. “She was so much fun. And she would reach out to the parents to help and always welcomed us in the class and was just so communicative. It was definitely a collaboration of making sure the whole student’s needs were met. Every time I’d come back to Flint, I would read to the school and Ms. Shaft would just love Chandler coming back to the class and just sitting and hanging out with her. So that’s how much she meant to us, we lived in Atlanta, but we’d come to Flint to visit and we’d make a point to go visit the school.”
She was also Uppman’s first teacher at St. John Vianney after she moved here from Oklahoma. The structure of her classroom was intimidating at first, but ultimately resulted in a great learning environment.
“I was initially scared of her because she had her rules and we had to stick to them,” Uppman said. “But she was also very kind. I think it’s just very admirable that she dedicated her entire life to teaching third graders. She was a great teacher.”
That ability to exhibit kindness while also balancing it with discipline wasn’t just reserved for the classroom.
“She was very soft-spoken, but you didn’t mess around with her,” Grohoski said. “You knew she meant business. She got to be very close with Father Tom (Firestone), and he talked at her funeral about how when she needed something she would ‘summon him’ to her classroom.”
Shaft grew up in Mott Park and also attended St. John Vianney. After graduating from Powers, she moved to Chicago for college and worked there before returning to Flint to teach at St. John Vianney. She is survived by sister Kathy (Paul) Bonner; nieces Elizabeth (Cameron) Carr and Lauren Bonner; great-niece Lillian Claire; and many cousins as well as close friends. Shaft’s obituary notes that, among treasured memories of her nieces, was the time they spent making gingerbread houses and watching Christmas movies with her each year.
That theme, of constantly being giving with her time, impacted countless people during her life and career in education.
“She just had all kinds of different ways of teaching,” Grohoski said. “I learned a lot from her. She was very dedicated.”
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