The best things in life you can give your children are roots for stability and confidence and wings for aspiration. The old adage has been passed down for generations, but for some, its meaning holds especially true.

A small but devoted group of teachers at St. Aloysius High School, Joan Thornton, Chesley Lambiotte, Dawn Meeks and Bruce Ebersole, serve as senior sponsors, helping students to write the ending to one chapter and figure out the beginning of the next.

Theology teacher Joan Thornton said she is the one teacher who has the whole class together at one time daily and a major component of her role involves planning the senior retreat.

“It’s different each year, but it’s always service-based,” she said. “We have four pillars of heroic leadership, and they go out to senior retreat on the third pillar, which is love-driven leadership. If we say we have a relationship with Christ, we must show it with our actions.”

This year, the seniors took a trip to Cary for their retreat.

“We reroofed a house, we worked at the thrift store, and we worked on the campus,” Thornton said. “And then we spend time thinking about who God is in their life, what are the different relationships they have and how do you strive to maintain your faith when you go off and experience so many different things.”

The retreat is a bonding experience for the seniors as well, many of whom have spent more than a decade together and will soon be parting ways.

“Even though most of them have been together since preschool, we intentionally put them with people (on the retreat) who they don’t socialize with or don’t know very well,” she said. “This gives them a chance to realize everybody does have different things to offer.”

Thornton, serving in her current capacity for the fifth year, taught this year’s senior class from preschool through second grade, seventh, ninth and twelfth grade.

“It’s hard to see them leave,” she said. “You send them off with a lot of prayer and excitement because you know all that they can do and you pray they have it within them to recognize — especially with this class — the gifts and talents that have yet to be discovered. It will be fun to watch and see what they truly become. They have lots of personal dreams they can fulfill if they’re given the right opportunity and they have the initiative to go for it.”

Thornton said the most rewarding part of working with seniors, including this year’s class, is that they trust her enough to come to her.

“They know I may not have the answer, but together we can figure it out or at least start them on the path to figure it out,” she said.

Science teacher Dawn Meeks is the academic senior sponsor, and she helps seniors with scholarships, recommendations and college admissions.

“I’ve met with them individually and in small groups, and it’s more of the concrete applying to colleges, getting transcripts and making decisions,” she said. “We’ve got some kids that have received big scholarship offers: we’ve got a National Merit Finalist and one who received an appointment to West Point.”

Meeks said the decision making process has been slow and methodical, but one she has enjoyed watching.

Meeks has more than 30 years of teaching experience, but she said seeing the seniors leave each year has not gotten any easier.

“As a matter of fact, as I’ve gotten older, it’s gotten harder,” she said. “It’s a very emotional attachment. These seniors, some of them, I’ve had every year since ninth grade.”

For Meeks, there’s truly no job like teaching.

“I think every student I’ve ever had becomes a part of me,” she said. “I hope that I give them a tiny little bit of something that can make their life easier and better. I think that’s with all teachers; if you’re in it for the right reasons, I think every student you have changes you just a little bit.”

St. Aloysius alumna Chesley Lambiotte is back at the school for her first year as the senior English teacher, and she said it’s been a wonderful experience to work with this year’s class.

“I’m already getting very sentimental about them leaving, being my first class,” she said. “I love the fact that I’ve been able to get to know them in such a familiar way and a personal way being on retreat with them. I got to know them and their dreams and who they are and who they could be.”

Lambiotte said she loves celebrating personal accomplishments with her students.

“Whether it’s school related or something else; whether they jumped up four points in English or they’ve just decided to go to Purdue,” she said. “When they come to you and they want to celebrate with you and share those things with you, I love that.”

Lambiotte said she can’t wait to watch the members of the class of 2016 take flight.

“I feel like a mother hen,” she said. “We’ve made it through our main units, and now I’m trying to give them some life advice. We’re sending them out into the world, and there’s some of that roots and wings philosophy.”

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Editor’s note: This story is the first in a series of four, publishing each Tuesday leading up the local high schools’ graduations. The stories are meant to highlight the schools’ senior sponsors, often unsung heroes, who help students bridge the gap to adulthood.