‘Every day at this school is a good day’
CARING TEACHER — Joanne Royal Kerrigan praises her student Ahmir Sellers for a project well done.
By NADIA MARIA SMITH
CS&T Staff Writer
PHILADELPHIA — When she had to go through 38 rounds of chemotherapy and have an operation for stage-3 cancer, she only missed a few weeks of school. When she broke her arm in three places and had to have surgery, she only missed a week of school. And this year, when she succumbed to a terrible bout of the flu, she only missed one day.
Some say it shows the type of dedication that Joanne Royal Kerrigan has exhibited over the past 50 years as a Catholic school teacher, but she believes it has everything to do with the school.
“We are not a young faculty. We have teachers who have been teaching here for 39 years [and] others, 25. We don’t have a big turnover of teachers. There has to be something special about St. Martin for everyone to be here that long,” said Royal Kerrigan, who has been at St. Martin of Tours School in Northeast Philadelphia for the past 31 years. “Every day at this school is a good day and it makes you happy.”
That has everything to do with the faculty, the students and parents of St. Martin of Tours, Royal Kerrigan said. “It’s a wonderful place. It gets in your blood and you just love St. Martin of Tours. The people here are my family.”
She began teaching in 1958 at the former St. Carthage School in West Philadelphia, under the Sisters of St. Joseph, who had taught her when she was in grade school at the former Our Lady of the Rosary School, also in West Philadelphia.
While she was teaching second grade, she went to college, taking six credits a year toward her bachelor’s degree in education. She eventually graduated from Gwynedd-Mercy College. After spending nine years at that school, she was asked to go to Epiphany of Our Lord School in Plymouth Meeting to work with the Sisters of St. Joseph there. She taught eighth grade for most of her 10 years there before moving on to St. Martin of Tours.
She was happy to return to the city. There, she joined the Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, who had taught her at West Catholic Girls High School.
Royal Kerrigan believes in the power of Catholic education.
“It has a very calming effect on the children, especially when we go to Adoration and Mass,” she said. “It gives them a sense of values, it gives them a love for other people, it teaches them tolerance and it’s even good for the non-Catholic children.”
Royal Kerrigan has not regretted a single day of the past 50 years. In fact, she can’t believe how fast they’ve flown by.
“I have no plans for retirement,” she added. “I’ll know when it is time when it stops being fun getting up every morning at 4:30 a.m. and going to school. It is still really fun. I love it.”
CS&T staff writer Nadia Maria Smith may be reached at npozo@adphila.org or (215) 965-4614.