Longtime educator follows family path

Teaching runs in John Hofstetter’s blood.

Born and raised in Jenny Lind, a tiny western Calaveras County town, he was taught by his mother in the same one-room schoolhouse that her father taught her in.
 

“From my point of view, it was kind of hard because she always wanted to make sure no one suspected her of favoritism,” he said.

After graduating from Calaveras High School in 1951, he went off to college in San Jose.

While on summer break at the end of his junior year, trustees of the Jenny Lind School approached him with an offer to teach. Two of the three trustees happened to be distant cousins.

“They said, ‘Hey, your grandfather was a wonderful teacher, your mother was a wonderful teacher. Obviously, you can do this,’ ” he said.

So in 1954 he taught the school’s 36 students and he’s never looked back.

After two years in Jenny Lind, he went on to teach at elementary schools in Murphys and San Andreas for 20 years before becoming principal of Valley Springs Elementary for 17.

Hofstetter has not only been a teacher, but also a student.

During summers, he took college classes to earn his degree, and he eventually obtained a master’s degree in education administration.

Last year, the Valley Springs Elementary School library — which also serves as the town’s public library — was dedicated to Hofstetter. The library is used by students, but at 1 p.m. it opens to the public and a divider is put up until the end of school. After school, children are allowed at the library with their parents.

On the library’s walls are photographs taken by Hofstetter, who taught photography for more than 20 years at Columbia College. His teaching doesn’t end there: he also coached sports and taught computer classes to teachers in Tuolumne and Calaveras counties.

Hofstetter retired from teaching in 1993, but he still stays busy.

He’s a docent at the Sierra Nevada Logging Museum, in White Pines near Arnold, and maintains the museum’s Web site, www.sierraloggingmuseum.org.

During the winters, Hofstetter and his wife, Wanda, leave their longtime home in Murphys and head to Southern California. They typically go to Desert Hot Springs from late December to late March, followed by a month in Death Valley.

Hofstetter, 76, finds the hot water pools therapeutic.

When Hofstetter was a toddler, he got polio and was in quarantine at San Joaquin General Hospital. He wore leg braces until he was 8 years old.
 

As an older adult, the effects of having polio as a child caught up with him and he now suffers from post-polio syndrome. A scooter has helped him get around for the past several years.

“We’ve been married 54 years and I’ve never heard one word cross his lips about he doesn’t feel good or he’s mad about this or that,” his wife said. “He doesn’t complain. He doesn’t whine. He’s a very positive person.”

Hofstetter and his wife have three children, including two sons — one who lives in Murphys and the other in Carmichael.        

They also have a daughter who happens to have picked up the teaching gene — she teaches fifth grade near Grass Valley.