Teacher Varina Pickett Retiring From Midvale School

Midvale School is saying goodbye to one of its longest serving elementary teachers. Varina Pickett is retiring after forty years of teaching hundreds of students, serving under six different superintendents, and working in three different classrooms. She has taught kindergarten, grades 2-6, and a high school reading class. Her Master’s degree is in Math K-6. “It’s been a very good life,” she says. Also, being able to teach her own son and daughter was wonderful.

Some of her former students have returned to Midvale to serve as school superintendent, school board trustee, and elementary teachers. It was a special honor to mentor two former students, Chelsea Doggett and Amanda Uhlenkott, as they pursued their career in education. The second generation has also come through her classes, children of her former students.

So how did a resident of Alaska end up in tiny Midvale? Varina’s husband, Alan wrote the following:

“In late August of 1982, Varina Van Veldhuizen, along with her father Phil, traveled the last leg of their journey from Fairbanks, Alaska to Caldwell, Idaho. Varina would be entering her junior year at the College of Idaho. She would also be entering the fall semester as the college’s first Truman Scholar, having won the award the previous spring. Her father was a math professor at the University of Alaska Fairbanks but was taking a year’s sabbatical to teach at his daughter’s college.

“They were driving south on Hwy 95 and had just come out of the narrow canyon between Cambridge and Midvale. As Middle Valley opened before them, they noticed a farmstead along the banks of the Weiser River below them. They both commented on how pretty it was and speculated about who lived there. A few miles down the road, they passed through Midvale.

“A year later in the fall of 1983, Varina would have occasion to visit that farm. She was with her future husband, Alan Pickett, and he had taken her to that pretty little farm to meet his parents for the first time. Little could she have known when her eyes first gazed down upon that farm on the banks of the Weiser River a year before, that it would be the place where she would spend the majority of her life, raise her children, and teach in the elementary school in Midvale for forty years.”

Varina shares that her first superintendent, Joe Whitten, gave her some advice that she has relied on all these years. He said, “Don’t tell the kids anything you’re not willing to follow through on.” She says that has served her well.

When asked about changes in education from when she started teaching, Varina said that the state now expects teachers to do more for each student beyond education. Also, when she started, testing was done “to inform the teacher of any areas they need to improve.” Now standardized tests required from the state do not give sufficient feedback to the teacher. Also, some parts of the elementary tests are not developmentally appropriate for young students. However, despite the changes, Varina expresses great satisfaction in her many years of teaching young minds.

Alan and Varina are happy to be able to spend more time with their children. Joe Pickett and Annie Morrison live in Caldwell. Melissa Pickett and Tristan Morris, with four-year-old Cedric, also live in Caldwell. They are hoping to take a repeat road trip up to Alaska to visit family, who still live at the home place where she grew up as well as other trips.