Dori Trustem

Dori Trustem graduated 40 years ago from the University of Wyoming and quickly signed with Park County School District 1. Since then she’s worn many hats during her time in the district, which came to a close at the end of the school year.

“What a legacy of teaching, learning and leading she leaves. Saying goodbye or farewell is never easy and the door to retirement is certainly well deserved. But we will never be the same without her in our presence,” said Special Services Director Ginger Sleep. Sleep worked with Trustem in her numerous roles. “Dori gives with her whole heart and she has selflessly devoted 40 years to the children, students, staff and families since 1983.”

Trustem was born in Powell and graduated from Powell High School — she had interned at Parkside Elementary School in special education and luckily, when the time came to get a job, she was hired right away as a first grade teacher where the same principal still worked. 

“Well I always knew I wanted to come back home. I just liked Powell, my parents were here and I thought it would be a good place to raise a family, which it absolutely was,” Trustem said. “I guess I just never thought of wanting to go anywhere else.”

Many hats

In PCSD1, Trustem has been a first grade teacher, a looping teacher (a teacher who traveled two grades with a class before starting again), an instructional facilitator and a case manager. She also served as a seventh grade volleyball coach and eighth grade assistant volleyball coach. She was a summer school principal for five years and a junior varsity volleyball coach for nine years.

Throughout all these positions Trustem said she has served under seven different principals and seven different superintendents. 

“I love the people I work with. I just can’t say enough good about the school district,” Trustem said.

She has occupied a variety of roles during her time in the district so it’s understandably hard to decide where she’s had the most impact.

“I don’t know because they were all so different. I guess I would say probably teaching just because I worked with so many students and am still in contact with some of them,” Trustem said.

She didn’t take credit but said that many of her students went into teaching. She’s had an impact in all of her roles, she decided, and hopes that she had an impact working with teachers as an instructional facilitator.

“I just had more contact with students when I was teaching and coaching too,” she said. 

Trustem spent many years in each position and as a result she developed a lot of close relationships with much of the staff in the district. 

“I couldn’t have asked for a better career or a better place to work, I’ve learned a lot from all the different mentors I have and hope I was able to mentor people in the same way so that they learned from me,” she said.

Focusing on family 

One of Trustem’s fondest memories in her career is when Southside Elementary School won the blue ribbon award and the National Title 1 School in the same year. She was also at Southside Elementary when it was the first Professional Learning Community in the district.

“I feel that I played an important role in that as well as everybody else at Southside,” Trustem said. 

In talking bout Trustem, Sleep ended her speech by calling her a face of “the word teacher, educator and leader here on earth.”

Now in retirement, Trustem hopes to focus on her family, as her parents are still in the area as well as her mother-in-law. And of course, she hopes to spend lots of time with her grandkids.

Still, she doesn’t know if she is completely done with the school district. Trustem doesn’t know what it will look like yet, she said, but she could be a substitute teacher within the district, and she’s also considering getting her consulting license.