Teacher feature
Editor’s note: This continues our series on new teachers and staff at Tracy Area Public Schools and St. Mary’s.
A parent’s touch.
That is just one aspect Kaylen Weidert is bringing to St. Mary’s School as its new assistant administrator.
Weidert is the latest to fill a role that in the recent past has been held by longtime employee Chris Schons and more recently Shea Pedersen. And she couldn’t be happier in the environment that St. Mary’s provides.
“As a parent coming in, I think that has helped, because I know on a parent’s level the concerns there are to bring up,” Weidert said. “I can bring a parent aspect to the school.”
Weidert is a 2012 graduate of Canby High School. She attended Ridegwater College in Willmar for three years for Ag Business, Farm Management and Dairy Management.
“Agriculture was my original path,” she said.
Weidert worked for three years at CHS after graduating from Ridgewater, and from there, she went to work at another elevator in Holland while still living in Tracy. Her nomadic nature turned out to be less than ideal, however, which is how she ended up working at Minnwest Bank for the last nine years.
She started as a teller at the bank and then switched over to a universal banker role; she was also the director of the banks’ Money Magic program. After five years of doing that, she transferred to the insurance department to become an agent.
The jump from working at a bank for nearly 10 years to a school setting might seem like a big one, but it turns out, it’s right up Weidert’s alley. In high school, she had visions of becoming an ag teacher, but the extra schooling she would’ve needed in college wasn’t part of her plan.
“I kind of switched my path around, got offered other positions … I just put being an ag teacher on the back burner and never looked back,” she said. “When this position became available, I thought it was a chance for a change; it gives me more free time with my daughter.”
Emmy is now 7 and is a student at SMS. “I love this school — I love the teachers, the families and being able to help make sure the school is as successful as possible and to keep it growing,” she said.
Weidert also helps with church duties and does some custodial work as well.
“I love staying busy,” she said. The free time Weidert wasn’t able to enjoy with her other jobs allows her to help on the family farm and continue her side business KK’s Kitchen, where she bakes cupcakes, cakes and cookies and makes beef tallow body butters. The Beck farm is home to registered Simmental and Simmiangus cattle.
