Joyce Lund earns Teacher of the Year award

A teacher at Our Lady of the Valley Catholic School was honored in 2024 as Teacher of the Year by the Wasilla Sunrise Rotary Club. This is the fourth time in Joyce Lund’s 52 years of teaching children that she has been granted this award by various organizations. At 73, she recently retired as the part-time principal of the school but intends to keep on teaching.

“It’s what I’ve loved to do, teaching, and I’ve done it since 1974,” Lund said. “I tell my students that when I was in the 8th grade, I asked God to help me go to a Catholic school. He couldn’t do it then, but here I am all these years later in a Catholic school.”

The Lunds came out of Colorado where she was raised on a family ranch in Ordway. “We were land rich and cash poor, so I was praying for the money to go to Catholic high school,” she said. “My students say, ‘Gee, you waited 46 years.’ And I say, ‘Yes! God answers prayer on His time, not ours.’”

Her husband worked with migrant workers and taught future teachers at Colorado State College in Pueblo, Colo., when they first met. She began teaching in 1974 in Colorado, the same year she and Karl married. The Lunds continued their teaching partnership in Hooper Bay, Alaska, in 1979. She taught kindergarten.

“I was teaching children who didn’t grow up on television. They still spoke their Yup’ik language,” Lund said. Early on, she placed culturally relevant lessons into the curricula before that practice became common.

Twice after leaving in 1985, Joyce was called back to Hooper Bay to be the commencement speaker for the graduating classes of her kindergartners.

In 1985 they left Hooper Bay to teach in the Mat-Su. Joyce Lund taught six years at Tanaina Elementary School and 19 years at Finger Lake Elementary School. The pair retired officially from public school teaching in 2011 and set off for South America in search of mission work. Karl has been a lifelong Lutheran while Joyce is solidly Catholic. “We have an ecumenical outlook on how we address education and children, and we made a great partnership from it,” she said.

“We wanted to do some kind of mission work and thought that might be in Panama,” Lund said. “Then my son suggested doing something for urban children because we’d already done the Bush.”

She put in an application for Our Lady of the Valley Catholic School, which was then located in a Wasilla strip mall. Sister Ann Fallon interviewed her.

“She looked at me and asked, ‘Why do you have to go so far to do mission work?’ So, I started teaching at the school – that was the mission God had in mind for me,” she said. The school has since moved to a building on the property of Sacred Heart Parish, located on Bogard Road in Wasilla. Her vocation included volunteering as the school’s part-time principal. She also teaches piano lessons and pays the wages into the school’s discretionary fund.

“Music was always part of my platform for instruction; I often teach lessons through music,” she said. Recently, after borrowing chimes from St. Elizabeth Ann Seton School, she was able to purchase her own from vegetable and plant sales held by Alice Matthews. The chimes were worked into services at the church, and students learned to play them.

Karl is 81 now and the pair continue as a team in the efforts for students. He helps out with a variety of tasks at Our Lady of the Valley Catholic School. The pair, who lost one of their sons at the age of 10 in a car accident, have worked 25 years with the Mat-Su Grief Support Group. They also team coordinate at Trinity Lutheran Church of Palmer for the community garden, which raises vegetables for the Palmer Food Bank with students assisting.

It’s been a great partnership that’s lasted as long as her career.

“I went straight into the classroom at 21, and that’s where I’ve been ever since,” Lund said. “The story of my life is really a story of partnership with Karl because we’ve done everything together.”

Her teaching awards include 2024 recognition as Teacher of the Year by the Wasilla Sunrise Rotary Club; in 2020, Top Teacher in America; 2005 BP Teacher of the Year from the Mat-Su School District; and in 2002, National Citizenship Teacher of the Year Award from the Veteran of Foreign Wars. In 2019, Lund was recognized by the Archdiocese of Anchorage as the nominee for the 17th Annual St. Francis Stewardship Award from Sacred Heart Parish.

Correction: The article was updated to correct the name of the Wasilla Sunrise Rotary Club.