Faith, family and fundamentals: Albuquerque's Immanuel Lutheran School starts 100th year of teaching

Sep. 18—It feels right that Immanuel Lutheran School is near the heart of an older section of Albuquerque, because the school's roots run deep in the city.

The school and Immanuel Lutheran Church are at 300 Gold SE, at the intersection of Gold and Arno, just south of Central and just east of Broadway.

Never noticed it? Then you don't get to that part of town much or you haven't been paying attention.

This month, the school marks the start of its 100th year of teaching classes on this site, and the church has been there longer than that.

Today, Immanuel Lutheran is a kindergarten to eighth-grade school that also has some preschool students.

It has evolved from a single classroom to multiple classrooms in a two-story complex with a gym and playground, but its tradition is strong enough to trip over.

"It has an old-town feel," said Wendy Dillon, who has invested 18 years of teaching at Immanuel Lutheran School. "And the church gives us that old-world flavor, like Albuquerque mission style."

Principal Kevin Dunning said the school adheres to old values while keeping up with new developments.

"Kids have access to computers, but we still teach grammar," he said. "Our kids still have homework."

Celebrating memories

Immanuel Lutheran School will celebrate its 100 years of teaching with a series of activities Friday through Sunday, at the school and church. You can bet Carl Clark Halberg will be there for that.

Halberg, 78, attended eighth and ninth grade at Immanuel Lutheran School in the late '50s into 1960. The school went up to ninth grade back then.

"When I started there, they had the church; the parish hall, which was built in 1934; and one house they used for classes," Halberg said during an interview at his Southeast Albuquerque home. "They built the new building in 1958 while I was there. The gym was built after my time."

He remembers how he and other boys would sneak away from the school at the lunch hour and put pennies on nearby railroad tracks so they'd get flattened into oblong shapes by the wheels of passing trains. He remembers playing softball atop the piles of dirt that were being used in the construction of Interstate 25.

"I was the biggest kid in ninth grade at Immanuel Lutheran," he said. "For P.E., an old bus would drive us down to Kit Carson Park (now Rio Grande Park) near the river and we played flag football. We had only a small area on the school grounds to play softball. The principal, Mr. (Walter O.) Bartels had to go to neighboring houses to retrieve balls, or get balls off the parish hall roof. Mr. Bartels was a neat teacher. His first year there was my last. He drove the school bus."

After Immanuel Lutheran, Halberg went to Highland High School, the New Mexico Military Institute in Roswell and the University of New Mexico.

He pursued a banking career in Albuquerque, but the truth is he left his heart at Immanuel Lutheran. He's at the school at least three times a week and is a member of Immanuel Lutheran Church.

"On Monday, I take money from the school and the church to the bank," he said. "On Friday, I change the sign at the church, and I do whatever comes up in between."

He has been a kindergarten grandfather, a role in which he reads to kindergarten kids, and he helped for several years with the school lunch program.

Halberg's wife, Mary, worked in youth ministry for the church and school for 17 years. Their two daughters and their son graduated from Immanuel Lutheran School, four grandchildren and a niece and nephew attended the school and two great nieces are there now.

"I have a good time down there all the time," Halberg said. "It's a religious school, and I'm a religious guy. I'm still there. It's that religious atmosphere."

Mary said the school's faculty sacrifices time and money throughout the year.

"It's a calling for them," she said. "The teachers want their students to achieve in their academics and in their Christian life."

Started by church

The school is a product of Immanuel Lutheran Church. Carl F. Schmid, a young seminary graduate, founded the church as a mission congregation in 1914. The church building that stands on Gold Avenue was dedicated in 1918.

Kerri Baum, the school's promotions coordinator, said Schmid, who had a chicken coop right behind the church, served as Immanuel Lutheran's pastor until 1960. Immanuel Lutheran Church has, in fact, had only four pastors in its history.

As early as 1921, the church's congregation started to talk about establishing a Christian Day School. That finally happened on Sept. 24, 1924, when classes started in a house the congregation purchased. The house was south of the church and faced Arno Street. The classroom was located on the east side of the house, and the west side was rented out as an apartment.

There were 20 students in grades first through eighth in that first classroom. All these years later, Immanuel Lutheran School has 66 students in kindergarten through eighth grade and 19 full- or part-time preschool students.

Baum said student numbers are way down from the 120 to 150 students the school had just a few years ago.

"COVID hit us hard," she said. "A lot of kids are home-schooled now or go to charter schools."

Baum said the school is not just open to Lutherans.

"We have Catholics, Presbyterians, Baptists, Church of Christ, nondenominational," she said. The school draws students from the Albuquerque Heights to the South Valley, from Rio Rancho to as far away as Los Lunas.

"Parents like our education," Baum said.

A Blue Ribbon

Dunning, the principal, has 45 years in education, nine of them as a teacher and the rest as principal or head of school. He has served at schools from Bellevue, Washington, to Las Vegas, Nevada, from New York City to a suburb of Chicago, from Portland, Oregon, to Cleveland, Ohio, and for several years in Hong Kong.

Dunning, who is Lutheran, actually moved to Albuquerque to retire but took over as principal at Immanuel Lutheran at the start of 2022-2023 school year.

Some schools he has worked at previously had enrollments of 1,000 to 2,500. He said there are advantages to being principal of a much smaller school such as Immanuel Lutheran.

"When you have 2,500 kids, you don't know all their names," said Dunning, 67. "Here, I know all the kids' names and most of the parents' names. When you know all the kids' names, you can see the impact of the school, which you can't when you have a thousand kids."

He said some students struggle academically, especially when they first arrive at Immanuel Lutheran.

"But when they get up to the sixth and seventh grade, you can see the effect of the fundamentals they have learned here begin to kick in."

Charlie Pflieger has been on the staff of Immanuel Lutheran for 32 years and was principal from 2000 to 2009. His three daughters attended the school. A seventh-grade teacher now, he specializes in math but teaches a few other subjects as well.

"I just wanted to help children, and I really loved math and teaching math," said Pflieger, 61.

He has accomplished that and more. In 2007, during Pflieger's time as principal, Immanuel Lutheran School was selected as a U.S. Department of Education National Blue Ribbon School. The Blue Ribbon program recognizes public and private elementary, middle and high schools for overall academic excellence or for progress in closing achievement gaps between subgroups of students.

Finding home

Wendy Dillon said she knew she had found a home within 15 minutes of walking into Immanuel Lutheran School.

"The minute your kids start going to the school, you are part of a family," she said. "Everyone is so welcoming. Everyone knows your name. We take opportunities to blend kids of different ages, to have that intergenerational feel. The kids visit each other's classrooms."

She said the school's teachers care about each other and do things together.

"We go to each other's houses to watch football games," Dillon said. "We have dinner with each other."

Dillon, 58, is in her second year of teaching third grade. She also has taught sixth, seventh and eighth grades.

She assists in the Christmas program and the spring musical. She said this year the Christmas program is "Straight Outta Bethlehem," which is about a group of orphans who live at the Inn in Bethlehem and witness the birth of the Christ child.

"It's songs and recitations from Scripture and costumes," Dillon said. "A lot of the little ones will be dressed up as sheep and other barnyard animals. It's usually the most charming thing you have ever seen."

Both of Dillon's sons attended Immanuel Lutheran. Her youngest son has a boy who is in first grade at the school and a daughter who is in third grade, the class Dillon teaches.

"She calls me Mrs. D," Dillon said of her granddaughter.

She said the school does not compromise on academics.

"We teach art, we teach P.E., we have music, we teach cursive writing along with all the other standard stuff," she said. "And we are all rooting for each other."