More Than a Family Bond
vBy Julie Eickhoff
Judy Willcut and two of her daughters share more than a genetic
bond, they all followed a career of teaching. Even more noteworthy,
they all specialize in Special Education.
The reward of a high school diploma and a college degree for Judy
came with its challenges, and it’s not something all her sisters could
experience. She explains that she and her next older sister attended
college while the three older sisters began working after the 8th grade
to help support the family. For Judy to attend high school, she had to
live, work and board herself in a different town as there wasn’t a high
school in her hometown.
When Judy went to college, women at that time were given the
option of studying teaching or nursing; Judy opted for the teaching
field. The decision wasn’t difficult, she comments that she had always
known she was going to be a teacher. She obtained a degree in
Elementary Education with a minor in Special Education. “It made
sense to me that Special Education would complement Elementary
Education because they were showing me different ways of teaching
to help people that were having problems with the traditional way of
teaching and the traditional curriculum,” she states.
In 1970, she finished college, moved to Yankton and began her
teaching career in Special Education, spending the next 49 years in that
field. She gained experience from various opportunities. She taught
self-contained Special Education classes at Lincoln Elementary School
with students who were approximately 14-20 years old. When these
students moved to the Yankton Middle School, then located on Walnut
6vHERVOICEvSEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2019
L to R: Natasha Phillips, Judy Willcut and Martha Williams
Street, she moved with them. A few years later, she moved to the high
school on Mulberry Street with the older students. She also spent time
teaching at Stewart Elementary and in the Resource Room at Lincoln
Elementary where she recently retired from.
Two of her five children, daughters Natasha Phillips and Martha
Williams, followed in their mom’s footsteps though neither initially
intended to.
Natasha admits with a shy smile, “I fought it for a long time
because I wasn’t going to go into the same field as my mom did.” After
becoming very familiar with disabilities when one of her siblings was
born with some, she became a paraprofessional. She worked with
many different types of kids, from those who needed assistance with
all their needs to those who just needed help in the classroom. “Which
was good because I got to see it all,” she states. She later obtained her
teaching degree at age 30 when she went back to college full time.
She now teaches at Beadle Elementary with the district’s program for
students with emotional and behavioral disabilities, working with
children in grades kindergarten through second or third grade.
Her younger sister Martha agrees that she didn’t intend to go
into the same field as well. Before teaching, she traveled, working as
a paraprofessional in Special Education. She now teaches at one of
the alternative high schools in Minneapolis, Minnesota in what is
equivalent to a Resource Room. She works with an age group of 15- to
20-year old students.
A Transformation
Judy witnessed many changes in the special education field over her