BIG RAPIDS — Students are only as interested in the subjects they are learning as the teachers who are instructing them. It would be difficult to find a teacher where that was more evident than Karen Bailey.

Bailey, 58, who died on Wednesday (May 5, 2010), taught fifth and sixth grades at St. Peter’s Lutheran School since 1995, and was instrumental in shaping the lives of children for much longer, serving as a teacher at G.T. Norman Elementary for six years.

Her love for teaching was evident among the faculty and students at St. Peter’s, Bailey’s husband Bruce said.

“She spent a lot of time studying about the subjects she taught,” he said. “If she was researching something for the fifth grade level, she would study it to a graduate school understanding into that subject.”

Although Bailey was a mother of three; the term mother applied to her in many different ways. Her relationship with Mother Nature also was important to her. Outside of the classroom, Bailey was diligent in teaching herself about subjects of interest as a committee member on the Muskegon Watershed Assembly, while serving as a stream monitor. For her efforts, Bailey was honored with the 2008 Mecosta County Northern Lights award for her work with the environment.

“She was committed to learning for herself,” Bruce Bailey said. “She started with the Adopt-A-Stream project, which was just a cleanup of Mitchell Creek at that point. She was always looking for ways to be a service-minded person.”

It will be a much different Mother’s Day for the Bailey family who are mourning the loss of the woman who meant so much to so many people. What they will miss the most, Bruce Bailey said, is the love she gave.

“Above all other things was love ... for all people, but for her children and me,” he said. “She was the model for care and compassion in the family setting as well as a community setting. That was the foundation of her being a good mother.”

Bailey had been fighting breast cancer since January 2008, 12 years after she was first diagnosed with breast cancer in 1996.

Even following chemotherapy treatments, Bailey managed to stay connected with students, returning to the classroom when she had the strength.

Her impact was felt by students of all ages, St. Peter’s Principal David Truog said. Many students who had Bailey as teacher years before would either write her letters or return to the classroom to let her know she had touched their lives.

It’s difficult to describe Bailey’s impact, Truog said, but her influence is often on display through the action of the children at the school.

“She applied everything she taught to the real world,” he said. “She started recycling at our school ... now we do it as an entire school. During our class picnics we all automatically clean up afterwards because that’s what she instilled in the students.”

Bailey demanded respect from her students, but never strayed from being compassionate. Her stern voice always commanded their attention, but she would just as likely pull a student aside to speak to them in a caring voice if they had a problem.

Despite her illnesses, Bailey’s mission was always to find new ways to help the environment while teaching her students to become good stewards for nature, said Terry Stilson, Muskegon River Watershed Assembly coordinator.

“She has been a really big part of our organization with all the work she’s done and getting her students involved,” she said. “She’s also been a friend to me. She not only wanted her students to learn about the environment, but also to be responsible citizens.”

Bailey brought learning to life for her students, who participated in river cleanups over the past five years, and most recently with the construction of a rain garden in the school’s courtyard from a grant the watershed assembly received. She also organized river and park cleanups for her classes over the past four years, Stilson said, teaching students the value of nature and how that education extended beyond the classroom.

“She was such an energetic and enthusiastic educator,” Stilson said. “She wanted to teach them about the environment so that those things would be important to them later in life.”

While students agreed that her love for the environment permeated the subjects that she taught, her love of Christ made her not only a great teacher, but a great friend.

“She was really like a second mother,” seventh grade student Lauren MacInnis said. “If you ever had a problem, she took care of it right away.

“I think her faith was what made her a great teacher,” she added. “She was really great ... there will never be a single person like her again.”

Bailey’s colleagues remember her in the same light. She has been described by the staff at St. Peter as the “spiritual glue” of the school, in addition to the leadership she provided as a teacher.

St. Peter’s teacher Sue Griffith, a friend of Bailey’s for more than 35 years, said her passion for teaching and her faith were two things that stood out about Bailey.