Carda has steeped her life in Catholic education and sees her position as a way to positively impact the lives of her students.
Sacred Heart School is publishing teacher profiles throughout the 2023-2024 academic year. Vonnie Carda is the 4th grade teacher at Sacred Heart Elementary School in Yankton, S.D.
Vonnie Carda knows about Catholic schools. Now in her 18th year at Sacred Heart School, she has also taught at Immaculate Conception in Watertown and John Paul II in Mitchell. “I just knew that if my town offered a Catholic school, I wanted to be a teacher there,” she said on a rainy fall afternoon. Carda earned her undergraduate degree from Southwest State University (now Southwest Minnesota State University) and has taught for 36 years, raised a family, and earned a master’s degree from University of Sioux Falls. She began teaching at Sacred Heart in 2005, soon after she and her husband, Kevin, moved to Yankton.
We’re teaching them how to say the rosary and how to go to adoration; this builds on the Catholic traditions,” says Carda. “The world is changing, and it brings social and emotional challenges to our students so having curriculum like Choose Love and The Boys Town Educational Model we can model behaviors we want to see in our classrooms and community.”
Carda has steeped her life in Catholic education and sees her position at Sacred Heart as a way to impact the lives of students well beyond their childhood. “I am an extension of what it means to be a parent.” Her daughter, Sydney, is an alumna of Sacred Heart School, and she now lives and works in Lincoln, NEB with her husband, whom she married this summer.
Carda loves teaching fourth graders, whom she says are “high energy and very inquisitive. If you get your haircut, they’ll let you know.” She made the choice to be in Catholic education at the beginning of her career because she feels strongly about its positive impact on a person. It’s easy to see that Carda is all-in on kids. She is particularly poignant in talking about them moving on from her class: “I hope that when you leave my class, you knew that I loved you.”
Carda is an avid traveler and brings her experiences back to her students in the social studies section of her class. Her family was featured in South Dakota Magazine in 2018 when they traveled the state. Specifically, they traveled to one town for each letter of the alphabet. Bernie Hunhoff, the owner of the Magazine, interviewed her for the article, who is an occasional guest in her classes. “Bernie brings South Dakota History alive with his stories and hands on treasures,” she says of Hunhoff. A culminating activity is when the students bring in food that was grown in our state and can explain how it relates to our state.
No matter how much Carda travels, she says of Sacred Heart, “It’s my home. It’s my parish. These teachers are my friends.” She cherishes volunteering at the Sacred Heart School Gala as a greeter, and has marveled in its evolution since she moved to Yankton. The gala raised over $350,000 this year, a real show of support from the Yankton community. “It’s a blessing,” to live in Yankton, says Carda.
Carda speaks of her strong bond with her students. Her son, Austin, passed away in 2020, and her father passed away this October. “When the kids get to see the real you, when you’re sad or you have a special intention, I come to know them and they come to know me.” She sees the value in her students connecting with her in a vulnerable way, and has borne the fruit of being upfront with them about sadness in her own life. “We all have crosses to bear, and those crosses transform us. By being open about how challenging they are, our crosses take on a new meaning and become sacred.” After her father passed away, she came back to numerous cards on her desk from her students saying they were praying for her. “I have learned so much from their gentleness,” she said.
Towards the end of our time together, she shares an especially warm moment with one of her students that happened after she returned from time away during her father’s funeral. “She said to me, ‘you’ve been gone for a week. I think you need a hug.’ And I said, ‘well, I heard your dog died on Friday. I bet you need a hug too.”
Vonnie and Kevin Carda have recently celebrated their 20th anniversary. They have two children, Sydney and Austin. Kevin is an insurance agent at Farmers Insurance in Yankton.