Exit, stage right after 34 years of school service

Gara Loskill departs from role in Jefferson City schools

After 34 years of service to the Jefferson City Public Schools, Gara Loskill is officially leaving the stage. Her career has been - metaphorically speaking - a long series of scene changes.

As a fresh-faced 22-year-old, she arrived in the district ready to teach eighth-grade public speaking, drama and reading. She was the first teacher to direct eighth-grade musicals. Her work caught the attention of music teacher Carl Burkel, who invited her to help with the high school's operettas.

When the two middle schools were constructed, she moved to the high school to coach speech and debate.

"I was already doing operettas when I went," she explained. "At the time, theater, speech, debate were pretty linked together."

She transitioned out of speech and debate in order to briefly work as an at-risk teacher at Simonsen 9th Grade Center. But when the JCHS theater teacher left, Loskill took the job and ran the theater department for more than a decade.

"I directed 18 operettas," she said with a chuckle.

Loskill was also an instrumental member of the group that advocated for the renovation of the Miller Performing Arts Center. Although the 1964-era high school had a small theater, the wiring wasn't up to code and technical equipment was primitive.

"Every time you wanted to do real theater lighting, it was done with an awful lot of orange cords," she said. "We just needed a real facility where kids could have a safe place to demonstrate their talents."

Ultimately, community organizers raised more than $4.5 million in private donations to fund the renovation in 2005.

"I happened to have a group of parents that year who were determined that their children should have better facilities to work in. And so we met a lot of late nights in my office trying to figure out a course of action," she said.

Seeing workers put the final touches on the state-of-the-art facility was a thrill for everyone involved.

"It is a great thing for students in our community and a great thing for people who appreciate theater in this community, to have a facility that's capable of being able to do the things you'd like to be able to do with theater," she said.

From Loskill's perspective, conquering the technical lighting and sound challenges is just as important as polishing student performances.

"There are a lot more jobs in the technical end than in the performance end," she said.

Later in her career, she served as the district's fine arts coordinator for grades 6-12. She also taught advanced courses in leadership and technical theater.

It was the leadership classes she taught at JCHS that launched her into her last position as coordinator of character education.

Throughout her career, her goal was to instill a sense of confidence in her students. In the early years with the eight-graders, she was intrigued by how her courses helped her students grow in self-awareness.

"A lot of public speaking is getting to know yourself," Loskill said. "They saw it as something that was rewarding to get to do."

For schools to be successful, Loskill said students, teachers and principals all must have a sense of belonging, a sense of competency over one's work and a sense of autonomy.

"Anytime one of those things gets out of balance, you have problems," she said. "When I look back over the last 34 years, any time things seemed off-track, it was because we lost perspective on one of them."

Because of the way her career unfolded, she taught one group of students in the mid-1990s for six years.

"To this day, I am connected to all of those kids, just because we were so together," she said. "I've watched them grow up ... that was a great time period for me. Even though I was exhausted all the time, it was great."

"And they are doing crazy, amazing things now. It's very exciting to have been a part of that."

Loskill said she's looking forward to a more relaxed era of her life. She's jazzed about riding Amtrak to Kirkwood every Thursday to see her new 3-month-old grandbaby and excited about being able to travel. She plans on having a small role helping with the St. Louis-based Character Plus education program.

As she enters this new phase, she said she'll miss the connections she's made with her students and is grateful for the friendships she's made.

"As I leave, that's what I'm most grateful for. That's what's really vital to me," she said.