photo by Cori Hilsgen
The president of All Saints Academy, Karl Terhaar, visits with Elisha Willenbring’s kindergarten class during “choice time.” He plays Uno with (left to right) Spencer Scholz, Colton Hern and Joe Hess. 

Karl Terhaar, the current principal of the St. Joseph Lab School, is preparing for the changes his new role as president of the newly formed All Saints Academy elementary Catholic school system will bring.

Terhaar has been the principal of the St. Joseph Lab School for the past five years. He is now the administrator of the three schools that have consolidated to form the All Saints Academy. These schools include the St. Joseph Lab School, St. Joseph School in Waite Park and Sts. Peter, Paul and Michael Elementary School in St. Cloud.

The merger was a result of Bishop John Kinney’s encouragement to find ways to more efficiently operate the schools.

The three schools will continue under the direction of their principals for the rest of this school year. In 2012, the three schools will operate with two principals and Terhaar will be the president. The current principals are Terhaar; Sharon Bichler, principal of Sts. Peter, Paul and Michael; and Kathy Cziok, principal of St. Joseph School in Waite Park.

Enrollment at the three schools is currently at 471 students with 123 at St. Joseph Lab, 90 at St. Joseph in Waite Park and 258 at Sts. Peter, Paul and Michael. Included are 76 preschoolers and a staff of 72.

With the consolidation of the three schools which is scheduled to begin in July 2012, Terhaar will be responsible for creating a common budget, registration system as well as fundraising and scholarship programs.

He plans to keep his office in St. Joseph and still be a presence at the school.

All Saints Academy has a new logo of a flame from a candle with rays of light in the appearance of an open book coming from it. The flame has three pieces representing the three merged schools. The tag line to the logo is “where Spirit meets education.”

“The logo represents the schools’ vision of combining the spirit of education and bringing the Holy Spirit into everything we do,” Terhaar said.

Terhaar’s goals for All Saints Academy are to keep Catholic education viable and available in the area. His vision is to create a school system that develops the “whole” child by being able to offer a spiritual aspect.

Terhaar hopes to better market what the Catholic school system is able to offer. He feels people should invest as much time and energy exploring school choices when their children start elementary school as they do when their children go off to college, because it is where their child’s foundation starts.

“By merging the schools, our resources will be pooled and we should be able to market ourselves as a group more than we could individually,” Terhaar said. “We want to get our message out in a consistent and positive manner. When people learn more about us and understand what we have to offer, they will become interested and see what we have to offer and hopefully will enroll in our schools. We have something special here and we do a really good job of raising kids.”

Terhaar said community leaders in the St. Cloud are currently working on a virtues project. He said the project will teach children to be more virtuous so there are eventually more virtuous leaders emerging from the school system. Terhaar will be attending training for the program and is hoping to incorporate it into All Saints Academy schools. He also said school staff are currently reading a book on raising ethical children so children will do the right thing not because they will be rewarded for it but because that is the ethical thing to do.

Terhaar said he worked with college students and would ask them what do you hope to get out of your education and why are you here? Many would reply that they wanted to make money. He said he often wanted to tell them there is more to life than making money – such as bettering oneself to help others.

“When you die, people aren’t going to say, ‘Gee, he had $5 million,” Terhaar said. “I would want them to say he was a great guy and did a lot of good for a lot of people.”

An upcoming brochure for All Saints Academy will focus on caring deeply, sharing generously and giving willingly.

Terhaar said he plans to work on getting more benefactors to support All Saints Academy with endowments so they can offer more scholarships. He hopes they can continue to become more financially independent.

All Saints Academy plans to offer the unique features of all three schools at each of the schools. The St. Joseph location currently has about 40 volunteers each semester from the College of St. Benedict and St. John’s University. The Waite Park location currently offers a reading program for dyslexia or struggling readers and the Sts. Peter, Paul and Michael location offers after-school enrichment activities such as Chess Club and Knowledge Bowl. Terhaar hopes to combine the best features of the three campuses so they can be offered to all students at all three locations.

Terhaar grew up on a farm in Lowry and graduated from Glenwood High School. He is proud to say he is a “farm boy.” “You can take the boy off the farm, but you can’t take the farm out of the boy,” Terhaar said.

He obtained his teaching degree from the University of Minnesota-Morris. He earned his master’s degree from St. Mary’s University in Winona through classes in St. Cloud in 2005.

Although Terhaar originally started out wanting to be an engineer, he found he enjoyed educating students.

While student-teaching at public schools, he said he felt spirituality was missing in the classroom and thought it needed to be included in a child’s education.

Terhaar has a total of 20 years of experience in education. He worked at various Catholic schools, including Hibbing and Superior, Wis. He taught fifth- and sixth-grade students and also worked summer school and taught preschool students.

“As a kid, I never liked school very much,” Terhaar said. “I thought it was very boring. That is why I wanted to teach. Coming from a male aspect, I wanted to do stuff. As a teacher, I was very hands-on, working with science-lab experiments and math manipulatives. I would bring in things so kids could visually see how math works.”

Terhaar said many adults have been turned off by math, but they shouldn’t be if it is taught right. He chose to teach so kids would get excited about science and math.

“That was my greatest joy,” Terhaar said. “What I miss about teaching is those moments when the kids were excited to be in school to learn – not just to play around and have fun, but would want to know what they were going to learn in science or math today. When the student has the ‘aha’ moment.”

Terhaar came to St. Boniface School in Cold Spring when his wife, Jody, accepted a job at the College of St. Benedict. While at St. Boniface, Terhaar helped with administrative responsibilities when the principal died in the middle of the school year. From that experience, he began to explore other ways outside of the classroom where he could help more students.

Terhaar met Jody in Morris. He was a residential advisor of a dorm, and she was his boss as the hall director.

They didn’t begin dating until after she was no longer his boss. The Terhaars have lived in St. Joseph for nine years. They have three children. Their son, Jeremy, is a senior at Cathedral; son Justin is in eighth grade at St. John’s Prep School; and daughter Rachael is in fourth grade at All Saints in St. Joseph. The family has three cats and a dog.

Terhaar is an avid bicyclist and usually bikes to work and around town.

“In the summer, my mode of transportation is my bicycle,” Terhaar said. “The reason for this is mainly for exercise and to be environmentally friendly. Why waste gas when I can get here just as fast biking?”

Terhaar said he understands the struggles people have when trying to decide where to send their children to school. He said many families have to give up material things to send their children through the Catholic school system. He also thinks our society has gotten very materialistic.

“I think that we as a society in the United States partied too much and spent too much in the 1990s as we maxed out credit cards,” Terhaar said. “ I think people lost sight of what is really of value in their life. We banked it on having stuff. Well, look where it got us. It got us in debt and now we are paying for it economically as a country. I think if people were a little more spiritual they wouldn’t find the need to try to fill that void by buying something. I think if people have that sense they want to buy – there is something missing in their lives. I believe if they were more spiritual, they wouldn’t have that need to be so materialistic, and they would be more happy with what they have.”

Terhaar feels society has gotten very caught up in materialism and who has the latest things. He said as a parent he struggles with how many things his children should have.

“I didn’t realize it at the time, but I grew up in a poor county,” Terhaar said. “But growing up, everyone didn’t have everything so we never thought twice about it.”