'Irreplacable' Sonora teacher retires

  Ask around at Sonora Elementary School and they will tell you, retired teacher Mike Pardina is irreplaceable.

The school held a surprise flag ceremony for Pardina Feb. 27, his last day as a teacher, and all 770 or so students filed onto the basketball courts and thanked Pardina, 61, for his years of service.

“I’m slightly overwhelmed by this,” Pardina said at the tribute. “My only thought is I want every one of you to graduate. I’m overwhelmed, thank you very much.”

 “He worked 37 years here and by far, out of any male, ever to walk across this earth, he’s got to be the best man I’ve ever met in my life,” said longtime colleague and friend Karen Sinclair, the school’s athletic director.

Sinclair and Pardina worked together for 29 years at Sonora Elementary and she described Pardina as the kind of person who always lent a helping hand to anyone who needed it.

“This one’s not going to be replaced,” Sinclair said. “He’s an icon.”

Pardina was born in Sonora at the Columbia Way Hospital and grew up in Chinese Camp. He attended Chinese Camp Elementary and Sonora High School.

He then attended Modesto Junior College, Columbia College when it was in Eagle Cotage in Columbia, and Stanislaus State College, as it was then known.

Pardina said he was drawn to teaching because of teachers he had, such as the late Viola Stratton Prothero who taught at Chinese Camp School for 47 years.

“Just the caring nature of them, their enthusiasm toward students,” Pardina said of what inspired him.

Many would say he adopted those qualities as his own.

"There’s nobody like him,” said longtime colleague Jeff Juhl, who has taught at Sonora Elementary since 1977. “If he sees something that needs to be done, he does it.”

Juhl describes Pardina as a humble man and a great teacher and friend.

Pardina’s first teaching assignment was as a student teacher at Jamestown School and Sonora Elementary when it was in the Sonora Dome.

He was hired on full time at Sonora Elementary in the fall of 1972 and over the years he has taught third, fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh grades, mostly focusing on science and social studies.

“The early years here we were much smaller,” Pardina said, adding they only had about 25 teachers compared to the more than 40 they have today. Pardina has seen many former students come back as parents and as teachers.

Pardina was key in bringing a seventh-grade Renaissance celebration to Sonora Elementary for many years. He created a catapult down on the lower field that was always popular with students.

Juhl said Pardina demanded a “tight ship” in the classroom, but that kids knew it and really liked him.    

“As a history teacher he was really knowledgeable about his subject matter and made it interesting. He could really spin it as a great story — rather than just dry facts,” Juhl said.

In an e-mail newsletter sent to all Sonora Elementary parents, Superintendent Margie Bulkin wrote that Pardina initiated “teen” day, chaperoned dances, coached girls softball, flag football, tended to the school garden, assisted with the sixth-grade outdoor education camp for many years at Pinecrest and was the school’s resident weather man.

In his newly acquired free time, Pardina plans to travel with his wife, Tracy, and garden, hike and fish.

Their first trip will be in April to Missouri so his wife can research her genealogy.

“My wife’s into genealogy so I’ll probably look at cemeteries,” Pardina joked.

A history buff, Pardina also plans to visit Gold Rush towns and museums.

He said he will miss the sharing of ideas and the “very special group of people” he worked with.

However, the students are what he will miss the most.