Home ec has changed, but its teachers have been meeting for 70 years in Cedar Rapids

CEDAR RAPIDS — For almost 70 years, teachers of family and consumer sciences — what used to be called home economics — have been gathering monthly in Cedar Rapids to exchange ideas and stay up to date on advances in the field that helps prepare kids for life.

When Marcia Kreutner, a family and consumer sciences teacher at Excelsior Middle School in Marion, joined the group seven years ago, she found the mostly retired educators there still “on fire” for the specialty.

Kreutner said that while the field — known as home ec until the late 1990s — has changed since many of these educators began teaching in the 1960s, she still is fighting gender stereotypes in her classroom.

Today, family and consumer sciences teaches many employability and workplace skills, leadership development and other life skills. The class — required for all middle students in the Linn-Mar Community School District — includes lessons in food safety, child development, finance, sewing and interior design. Kreutner teaches more than 600 kids a year in her classes.

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There are “extremes” in what students know when they step in to the classroom, Kreutner said. Some students, for example, are confident in the kitchen — including grocery shopping and preparing meals for their family — while others aren’t allowed to even use the microwave at home, she said.

There aren’t “a lot of local mentors available” to family and consumer sciences teachers, Kreutner said. “Sometimes you’re the only person in the school district doing that job.”

Kreutner is one of the few active teachers attending the group. Many of the other members, like Lois McCormick Shindoll, 86, are retired. Shindoll joined the group in 1965 when she was a home economics teacher at Harding Middle School in Cedar Rapids.

“We’re not your mothers’ or your grandmothers’ home economics or your grandpa’s agriculture program anymore,” said Katy Blatnick-Gagne, education consultant with the Iowa Department of Education and director of The Curriculum Center for Family and Consumer Sciences.

Blatnick-Gagne stressed that family and consumer sciences is a science. It’s research on what temperature to bake bread at, which is chemistry, and improving things like vacuums. The classes teaches future seamstresses — which NASA, for example, is in need of to create spacesuits and thermal blankets for astronauts, Blatnick-Gagne said.

Blatnick-Gagne said with many colleges no longer offering family and consumer sciences programs, future teachers aren’t being educated in the field. The Iowa Department of Education named family and consumer sciences as a teacher shortage area for the 2023-24 school year.

Iowa Code, however, requires schools to offer four of the six service areas in family and consumer sciences. This includes agriculture, nutrition, dietetics and food science, family studies and design merchandising.

“We’re teaching kids how to live on their own someday,” Blatnick-Gagne said.

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Jo Bodeke, 83, a member of the Cedar Rapids Family and Consumer Sciences group, began teaching home economics in 1960 when “mothers were still expected to stay home with the kids and there were no boys in the classroom,” she said.

By the time she retired in 1999, however, that was changing. There were “more boys than girls” in some classes because “they like to cook and eat,” said Milli Peshek, who also began teaching in the 1960s.

Bodeke said a lot of home economics is learning to follow directions in areas like cooking and sewing and learning to problem solve when something doesn’t go according to plan.

Bodeke, recognized as Iowa’s teacher of the year in 1996, also taught canning and food preservation, which she said is lacking in schools today.

Kimberly Greder, a human development and family studies professor at Iowa State University, uses her background in family and consumer sciences to inform programs offered by ISU Extension and Outreach, including classes in caregiving and child care, building relationships and improving physical and financial health.

Greder was a student in the 1980s of Bodeke at Linn-Mar High School, which she said was a “big part” of why she was interested in going in to the field.

“When families are strong, communities are strong,” Greder said. “These classes help kids understand what it means to be a parent, how to develop healthy relationships romantically and with your peers. … If you don’t have those courses during these formative years, how are kids going to learn? We can’t always expect it to happen in the home.”

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