Maureen Rueber made a pact on her first day of teaching at Harding High School in St. Paul.
By the end of the first week, she would know all of her students by name. If she forgot a name or mispronounced it, she would give the student a quarter.
That was 50 years — and more than 17,500 students — ago.
In all that time, Rueber has paid out only 50 cents.
“Names are important,” said Rueber, who also knows the names of all 200 staff members at Harding. “I always tried to attend my students’ games, concerts, plays … Because they invested time in my class, I wanted to invest time in them.”
Rueber’s last day at Harding is Monday. She has spent her whole career at Harding, the longest any St. Paul Public Schools teacher has been at a single school, according to SPPS officials. Mayor Melvin Carter recently declared “Maureen Rueber Day” in St. Paul.
Rueber, 73, of Afton, spent most of her career teaching home economics, now known as Family and Consumer Sciences (FACS), and taught a food occupations class in which she and her students ran a restaurant for teachers and staff, aptly named Rueber’s Restaurant. She also served as the school’s testing coordinator; led student leadership programs; organized student retreats; coached cheerleading; connected Harding students with local businesses and post-secondary institutions, and served as the school’s staff support person.
“She has done it all,” said colleague Allison Zaccardi, who teaches FACS. “She’s the all-around ‘mother’ of Harding. She has the answer to every question, and she is deeply invested in knowing all the staff and something about each person and their family. She takes the time to stay in touch with past students and staff, remembers important days and reaches out to let you know you are being thought of. Her work ethic is like no one else’s.”
A HARDING FIXTURE
Rueber is the first in the door each morning — before 6 a.m. — and is the last to leave — after 6 p.m.
“She needs a statue in front of the building,” said Kenny Olafeso, a 2004 graduate who works as a student support staff person at Harding. “She has played a part in pretty much everything that we have done at Harding.”
Olafeso and his twin brother, Peter, played on the school’s basketball team, and Rueber never missed a game, they said.
“She ran the school — in a good way,” said Peter Olafeso, who also works at Harding. “She’s extremely caring — that’s the first thing you notice about her. She’s our biggest supporter here. It’s hard to imagine Harding without her.”
Rueber, who started teaching in 1971, said she never considered working elsewhere.
“I loved it here,” she said. “I loved the kids. I loved everything about it. I loved the staff. The kids were always, always awesome. I never ever had to send a kid out of the classroom.”
Her teaching style changed through the decades, she said. “It used to be ‘sit and git,’” she said. “Now it’s much more interactive, and there’s a lot of collaboration, so the kids are doing things together. Everybody is engaged.”
No one is more engaged than Rueber, who is known for coordinating her shoes, reading glasses and face masks. Dress-up days during Spirit Week? Rueber will dress up every single day “no matter what,” she said. “Even if I was the only one, I still did it. Because the kids felt it was important enough to have, I thought it was important enough to participate.”
Rueber served on the school’s social committee and was in charge of buying staff and teacher retirement gifts.
“I really like personalized gifts,” she said. “We had one teacher who collected egg cups from Britain. I went to 17 different antique stores to see if I could find one, and I finally did, and he loved it. I always felt that you got more bang for your buck if you showed them that you cared.”
DESTINED TO TEACH
Rueber grew up in Monona, Wis., the oldest of four children. She decided she wanted to be a teacher when she was in third grade. “I’ve always loved school,” she said. “I’ve always loved my teachers. My father wanted me to be an airline stewardess or an anesthesiologist, but I said, ‘Nope, I’m going to be a teacher.’”
During Rueber’s senior year at Monona High School, the Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association allowed girls to compete in track and field for the first time. Rueber took first place in the state in the shotput, the 100-yard dash and the 440-yard relay.
She debated between teaching physical education and home economics, but felt she would enjoy home ec more, she said. “I liked to cook,” she said. “At that point in time, I liked to sew, craft, whatever. It just was a good fit.”
She went to Mount Mary College, an all-girls Catholic college in Milwaukee, graduating in 1969. After serving as assistant to director for vocational education for the state of Wisconsin for a year, Rueber was hired to be the seventh home ec teacher at Harding.
“I started where the nurses’ office is now and then moved to Food Labs, where it still is today,” she said during a recent tour of her former classrooms. “Then we moved to the room where ROTC is now. Here’s where the restaurant was.”
HARDING IN FAMILY’S BLOOD
Rueber has two sons, Jeff and David Rueber, who attended Harding. Her husband, Tim Kiemel, a former professional baseball player, taught social studies at Harding and coached the school’s football and baseball teams before retiring in 2002; he also has two children.
Rueber, who used to live in Roseville, coached her sons and served on the board of the city’s basketball and baseball associations, where she distinguished herself by keeping calm and collected on the sidelines, she said.
“Another coach once asked me how I did it, and I said, ‘If they didn’t learn it in practice, they most certainly are not going to learn it with me yelling at them during the game,’” she said. “If I saw something, we would just cover it the following week.”
If there was a questionable play on the baseball field, all would turn to Rueber for a ruling, she said. “I knew the rules from my father, and I knew them from my husband,” she said. “I also read the book. I knew the answers.”
Before Be Vang started as principal in 2019, her predecessor, Doug Revsbeck, gave her a list of names of people whom she could turn to for help during the transition. “Maureen’s name was at the top of the list,” Vang said. “He said, ‘Whatever answers you need, you go to Maureen.’ I was, like, ‘OK, who is this Maureen Rueber?’ Even before I had met her, I had heard great things about her and her supportive role.”
Rueber would troubleshoot problems and jump in without being asked, Vang said. “She would say, ‘Be, I’ve got this. Don’t worry about it. I will take care of it. I’ve done this before.’ I would say, ‘Are you sure, Maureen?’ She would say, ‘You don’t have to ask twice.’ That’s just the kind of person that she is.”
‘A NUMBER 1 FAN’
For the last decade, one of the best parking spots at Harding has been earmarked for the school’s “Number 1 Fan” — the fan who attends the most home games. Rueber has had the spot for six of those 10 years.
“She truly is not only a support for students, but she is their biggest cheerleader,” Vang said. “She has taken really good care of Harding — the students, the staff and the families here. We will miss not only what she has provided to us in terms of service, but we will miss Maureen — her personality, how big of a heart she has, just who she is. She has set the tone for folks at Harding. We will all miss that.”
Rueber’s retirement plans include gardening, traveling, attending sporting events, spending time with the couple’s 10 grandchildren, reading mystery novels and going to lunch with former colleagues.
“The timing is good,” she said. “I think 50 years is enough. It used to be, ‘My parents had you.’ Now, it’s ‘My grandma had you.’
“I don’t have a single regret,” she said. “I am richer from every person whose life touched mine — and that’s students and teachers alike. I just hope that I made a difference in their lives, too.”