Unsung Hero: Kathleen Huyck

She’s the first person you see walking into the school, the first person you hear when calling the school, and even the first person your parents see when they are trying to get into the building. In fact, Ms. Kathleen Huyck could be considered the face of Benilde-St. Margaret’s.

“I’m the front office receptionist at BSM and this is my third year,” Huyck said. One can always hear Huyck’s voice whenever there is a phone call coming into the main office or there’s a class trying to get into the building after a field trip. But her job as an office receptionist is not limited to that. “I’m exposed to a lot of different tasks or jobs. I substitute at the attendance office when Ms. Jacobson is gone,” Huyck said.

Her work in education didn’t just start at BSM though. “I worked [in] public schools [with] transportation reporting. Let’s say you just live in Bloomington, and you didn’t use the Bloomington public school. Because your taxes always pay for the school bus, the public school would have to send your family your reimbursement check. I need to send the public schools the number each year in the fall,” Huyck said. While acknowledging that there are multiple important jobs to handle, she always enjoys being occupied. “I feel like there is a huge variety in the job, so you don’t just get to do the same thing everyday,” Huyck said.        

In spite of the variety of crucial jobs Huyck handles on a daily basis, her jobs go beyond maintaining the BSM office. Occasionally, she will have to handle incidents from outside of the school. “Once, a man stopped by and said he was having a heart attack. I think he was not well at all, but we can’t let him in because the students come first and you never know. So, Coach Creer came and let him sit on his cart and we said we will happily call an ambulance but we just can’t let you in,” Huyck said. That’s when the vital importance of Huyck’s job comes in: she’s not only the face of our school, but she also helps to guard the lives of all the students in this building. And, in a country where school violence is constant, keeping us safe is her top priority.

In contrast to those incidents though, she gets to be part of the actual fun surprises. “I’ve had some staff people’s spouses calling to plan a surprise. They were going to drop something off, so we have to be part of the surprise. Madame Hyde’s husband has surprised her twice, so I got to be part of [it]. He dropped flowers off and had their son come and get them. We had to walk the flowers down the back way so she wouldn’t see them,” Huyck said.            

Huyck loves working at BSM and enjoys the energy and sense of humor that the staff and students bring. “I really enjoy the variety of the job and I love being around the students, and I work with great co-workers. I have encountered nothing but lovely things from all of them,” Huyck said.