Like everything in the world, Pine View has changed and adapted throughout its years. From its size, organization, and environment, four Pine View teachers express the changes they have seen through their own eyes.
Patti Gerlek
Spanish teacher Patti Gerlek has been teaching at Pine View for 32 years. While she has experienced lots of changes such as the relocation of the campus, Gerlek finds the most impactful and prominent change to be the decline of the family aspect. She says that when a campus grows as Pine View did, it is hard to retain the same sense of connection between all the staff and students. “It’s not negative or bad, it is just impossible to connect a campus of this size the same way it was when we had graduating classes of 60 compared to 260 now,” Gerlek said. She explained that with the campus growing in terms of students and staff as well as physical distance between the classes it is hard to get to know everyone at a personal level. These changes have not affected the love that she feels towards the campus, “I have loved being here and watching it grow. It has been a great run,” Gerlek said.
Jay Skipper
Dr. Jay Skipper is a Pine View graduate of the class of 1998 and has been back at Pine View teaching for 13 years. He was a student at both the old campus and the current one. However, Skipper said that the move was not very drastic for him because while the new campus was larger in overall size, it was very centralized so the area that he spent time and traveled through was roughly similar. As for the Pine View environment, Skipper believes that the Pine View culture is still very much alive. “I came back to teach at Pine View because I knew its culture and it was something that I wanted to be a part of again,” Skipper said. One change that Skipper has seen over the years and something he finds very positive is the increase in the clubs at Pine View. “When I was a student there were not many clubs, but now there is a very large variety and I think that if I were a student today I would be a part of some of them,” Skipper said.
David Nezlek
David Nezlek, also a Pine View graduate (class of 1997), said the change that stood out to him most was the mere increase in the size of the campus over the six years he has been teaching. He said the campus, which was once very centralized, has branched out and extended to the farthest corners. The large fields that were once bare covered only by grass are now home to a neighborhood of portables.
Elizabeth Loyer
Elizabeth Loyer, an alumna who graduated in 2011 and is now teaching just her second year at Pine View. While Loyer has not been at Pine View as long as Gerlek, Skipper, or Nezelek, she has seen her fair share of changes like the changes in the organization of subjects in different buildings and of course the construction of new buildings and classes. For Loyer, the change that impacted her most was that she is teaching in a classroom that did not exist when she attended school at Pine View. Her classroom is one of the portables that sits in the once bare field by the track. However, while these changes took some getting used to, “The campus, just like me, has changed over the years,” Loyer said.