Religious studies teacher Ms. Jane Nitschke was born in Duluth, Minnesota, growing up in a rural area outside the city.

“It was very different from what [La Salle students] experience,” she said. “We lived in farmland, we tapped our own maple trees, and we had gardens we all worked on during the summer.”

She attended Two Harbors High School in Minnesota, where she says her favorite classes were English and Psychology. Despite these two classes being her favorite, she still worked hard and became successful in all of her classes. “I did really well in all the subjects,” she said. “They were just the two that I enjoyed the most.”

With her goals and grades set high, Ms. Nitschke said she was determined to become a lawyer after high school. However, college in Minneapolis had something else in store for her.

“I had a professor, Arthur Kennedy, in my first theology class, and he blew my mind,” she said. “I was like, ‘I want to learn more about this.’ So I changed my major.” 

Ms. Nitschke attributed her love for religious studies not only to college but to her immersion in her faith from a young age.

“Since I was about 16, it has been a primary importance in my life,” she said. “It’s shaped who I am. It is something that I know is always in the back of my mind, it is my faith and my belief in Jesus that impacts me and how I’m supposed to serve others and interact with those that I come into contact with.”

After switching her major, she moved on to graduate school and attained her master’s degree. She began her career as a youth minister in Mishawaka, Indiana, and also worked for a nonprofit organization as a grant writer. Eventually, she moved to Oregon.

In Oregon, Ms. Nitschke began working as a substitute teacher for De La Salle North Catholic and Edison High School, and through this work, she “decided I wanted to make this a career,” she said. So, she went back to school and got her master’s degree in teaching, going on to teach at Jesuit High School before spending the last 10 years of her teaching career at La Salle.

She also said working with people, specifically kids, played a significant role in her becoming a teacher. 

“When I look back on my career, a lot of my jobs were teaching at some level,” Ms. Nitschke said. “I was working with people, so I could see the connection.”

Ms. Nitschke said she was drawn to the community and people of La Salle. “I remember when I came here, I was walking around with Gary Hortsch after our interview, and I just looked in the classrooms, and I looked around the school, and I said, ‘I want to be here. This is the place I want to be.’” She was hired as a religion teacher soon after.

Outside of teaching, Ms. Nitschke pursues a number of hobbies, one of which is gardening.

“Growing up in the country, [gardening] was kind of like our job in the summer,” she said. “School would get out, and we would be planting, and then all summer we’d be harvesting and all of that. So it’s kind of in my blood.”

Ms. Nitschke is also an avid reader, currently in the middle of reading five different books. While she isn’t picky about her selection, Ms. Nitschke tends to stay away from horror novels. “I don’t like horror,” she said. “But I read pretty much everything else.”

Her three children and her husband are four people who she holds very close to her. The oldest, Jeffrey, has become a lawyer, the middle, Isaac, has become an aerospace engineer, and the youngest, Aaron, just finished graduate school to become an epidemiologist. 

One thing that Ms. Nitschke said had an important impact on her life was traveling and studying, both locally and globally.

“Studying in Rome definitely had an impact on everything, not only on my religion but on my understanding of culture,” she said. “So I think, of all the traveling around I’ve done, I’ve lived in seven different states, and all of it has had an impact on who I am and how I see the world.”