Students Can Count On Sister Nun Has Spent Last 57 Years Instructing Students In Math

Never mind that teachers these days struggle with classroom overcrowding, discipline problems and pressure to make their students perform. Or that the number of nuns and priests devoting their lives to teaching continues to decline.

Sister Scholastica Friesenhahn is still on the job, and plans to stay.

When she returns to her eighth-grade math class at St. Gerard School in San Antonio next week, Sister Scholastica will begin her 58th year of teaching.

“The feeling of touching so many lives is a reward you just can’t put into words,” the 77-year-old nun said. “Math is something so very important, yet so many youngsters don’t get the fundamentals. I teach because it’s more of the need youngsters have. They need a good foundation in math which is so important for their future occupations.”

Sister Scholastica bucks many trends. Not only does she stick to teaching, she continues to use her religious name and wears her habit at all times, a custom many others no longer practice.

“I want to be recognized as a religious sister,” she said. “It’s something I have chosen to keep because it is what I’ve always known.”

Proudly wearing a gold-trimmed medallion she won from the national math organization Mu Alpha Theta three years ago, Sister Scholastica commands respect in the classroom and in her profession.

St. Gerard Principal Maurice Abadie says the teaching nun - who has been at his school for eight years - is a rare gem.

“There are (fewer) people entering the clergy and others are finding other fields of work such as missionary or social work,” Abadie said. “Sister Scholastica is one of the best math teachers in the city.”

Sister Agnes Pawelek, associate superintendent for Catholic schools of the Archdiocese of San Antonio, said there are fewer clergy teaching around the country because many are retiring and few are entering the seminary to replace them.

“We began to have a shortage in the 1980s,” she said. “The schools would like to have more religious (teachers), but we do the best we can. And laymen teachers are just as qualified.”

But others recall a time when working at parochial schools was a way of life, not just a job.

“Years ago, they all worked and lived together,” said Brother Stanley Culotta, principal at Holy Cross High School in San Antonio. “They were always in the school. That gave us a dynamic plus.”

Sister Scholastica agreed. “We are totally dedicated to education, whereas laypeople may have a family to take care of,” she said. “It is a way of life, not just a job.”

Sister Scholastica plans to continue teaching, but for how long?

“That depends on God,” she said. “I feel a great sense of satisfaction that I am still able to give of myself and make a difference.”