Samuel Stegall, left, and Katie Murrish attend to a lesson from Sister Susan Yerkich, a math teacher at St. John Catholic School, 1208 Ky. Yerkich is the last nun teaching in the parochial school, in keeping with a nationwide trend in which nuns are increasingly leaving the classroom.

Sister Susan Yerkich assists Anneliese Bourgeacq with a math lesson.

From left, Sister Mary Lucy Downing and Sister Ellen Louise Burns are shown outside St. John's School when it opened in 1956. The nuns were two of the school's four founders.

One of a kind never looked so normal. In her khakis, blouse and loafers, Susan Yerkich dresses like any other busy teacher at St. John Catholic School. She buzzes around the room helping children learn math, leaning in to give each child personal attention as needed.

Typical? Yes and no.

Yerkich is also known as Sister Susan. She is the only nun teaching in any Lawrence Catholic school – and has been since 1994, when Sister Elizabeth Youngs left the school and Pat Newton became the first lay principal at St. John, 1208 Ky.

Yerkich’s life as the sole sister in her Catholic school is becoming one to which other sisters, brothers and priests across the country are also becoming accustomed.

All over the country, the number of sisters, brothers and priests teaching in Catholic schools has dropped dramatically. In 1920, 92 percent or 45,563 of the teachers in the United States’ 8,103 Catholic schools were sisters, brothers or priests, according to the National Catholic Educational Association (NCEA). This school year, only 4.1 percent or 6,594 of the teachers are religious and clergy. In Yerkich’s order, the Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth, only 45 of the 313 members (14.4 percent) are teachers – and many of them teach at the order’s college, the University of St. Mary in Leavenworth.

“Being here, I don’t feel like, ‘Oh, I wish there were more sisters here because I feel lonely,’ I think it’s kind of a tribute to the current lay leadership that the schools go on beautifully when sisters aren’t present. I mean, there was a time when that norm was (that) Catholic schools were staffed by sisters. But there aren’t that many sisters to staff the schools, but most of the sisters, or a lot of the sisters, want to do other kinds of work,” Yerkich says. “And so the lay people that are now making up the majority of teachers in Catholic schools are wonderful teachers and … I feel as though they pass on the same values that were started in the Catholic schools.”

More sisters in the sisterhood

When Yerkich became Sister Susan back in 1963, things were much different. Joining the sisterhood was not a solitary pursuit, nor was teaching in a Catholic school.

Yerkich joined Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth just months after completing her senior year of high school in Butte, Mont. There were 50 women who joined the order that summer, a handful of whom were high school friends who traveled on a train with Yerkich from Montana to Kansas to become sisters. Those high school friends have now been whittled to one: Sister Susan.

Just three years before Yerkich joined Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth, the NCEA reports there were 112,029 religious educators in elementary, middle and secondary Catholic schools – or 73.8 percent of the school staff. Yerkich worked through the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s and 2000s, watching the percentage of religious staffers drop steadily each decade – 48.4 percent, 29 percent, 14.6 percent, 7 percent – to its current 4.1 percent.

Why the dwindling numbers? Two reasons: fewer people entering the ministry and fewer people choosing an educational ministry.

“When I entered, there were 50 of us that entered, and that’s a lot. Now, they didn’t stay, you know, most of them left, in fact there’s very few of us left. There was a time when, if you wanted to work in the church, or something, a way to do it was to become a ‘religious’ and now that’s not necessarily true,” Yerkich says. “In those days, most of our ministry was teaching. We had the hospitals and the homes for children, but we predominately had schools that needed to be staffed. And so, it was just kind of typical, you know, that you’d go into teaching.

“A lot of women that entered in the ’80s or ’90s, for instance, were professional women. They did jobs that fit with what they studied to do in college.”

Finding her vocation

Ironically, Yerkich says she joined the Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth because it had other ministries besides teaching: health care and orphanages.

“Actually, I didn’t think I wanted to teach,” Yerkich says. “The only two orders I knew of were the Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary or the Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth. The BVMs taught, the SCLs did nursing and taught, and they worked in an orphanage. And I didn’t think I wanted to teach, but I thought I would like to work in an orphanage. And so, that’s a good reason, part of the reason I entered the SCLs and not the BVMs, and the irony of it is, when it came time for me to be out on a mission I was sent to a school first. … And then I realized how much I liked it.”

Becoming a nun was also something that Yerkich first didn’t think she’d want to do – but then the idea called to her during her teenage years.

“I started to think about it seriously when I was a junior in high school,” she said. “So, I entered our community in August of 1963. The community that I’m a member of actually taught me, they were the teachers that taught me in high school. I’m sure I was influenced by them and their teaching.”

She started her career working in children’s homes before turning to education in the 1970s. In 1982, she came to St. John, a school founded by four nuns of Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth. Since its founding in fall 1956, at least one member of the SCL community has worked at St. John, many serving as principals of the school, which currently has 256 kindergarten through sixth-graders and 36 preschoolers.

And every one of those kids, plus the adults in attendance, gave a big cheer for Yerkich during a Mass celebrating the Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth. The Mass came April 22 during a combined celebration of the school’s 51st school year and the SCL’s 150th year, and dedication of a garden and a bench at the school in the sisters’ honor.

“It’s Susan that we love and it’s Susan that is the person that is just very caring and a very special person,” Newton says.

Yerkich hopes to be that person in the lives of many kids for years to come. But what will happen when Yerkich, who is 63 now, retires? What if the school becomes sisterless for the first time?

“That’s the challenge – that we continue what they started,” Newton says. “And certainly, we’re very capable of teaching religion, you know, being good role models, so hopefully there wouldn’t be a drop in our identity or what we’re able to teach the children. But it’s just extra-special to have the presence of the sisters here and we’re really lucky to have had them for so many years.”