‘Blessed to be here’: Chad Clarey is a teacher, coach, volunteer throughout the community

Chad Clarey became a teacher and a coach because teachers and coaches mentored him.

“I teach because I fell in love with it at the Fox Valley Career Center,” Clarey said. “They had a child care lab, a preschool they ran so high school students could learn how to instruct children and make lesson plans. It was an introduction to teaching.”

The late Beverly Beckmann encouraged him to teach and the late Larry Eddington and Ralph Drendel, both Kaneland coaches, encouraged him to become a coach.

So he does both.

“When Larry passed away in 1994, Ralph needed a distance coach and asked me to join him as a volunteer,” Clarey said in an email. “Thirty years later, I’m blessed to still be coaching there.”

Clarey teaches first grade at Grace McWayne Elementary School in Batavia, where he lives, and coaches cross country at Kaneland High School, where he attended school.

For Clarey, teaching is not just in the classroom. It’s also done by modeling positive behavior in real-life settings.

For a dozen years now, he and another coach, Doug Ecker, brought their teams to volunteer at the Marklund Hyde Center campus near Geneva, a residential facility for adults with profound intellectual disabilities.

When Marklund hosts its summer games, 20 to 40 athletes volunteer, either outside or inside if the weather is bad.

“We’ve painted fingernails and done art projects and nature walks,” Clarey said.

For the past three years, Clarey also brought 75 first graders from three classrooms to Marklund along with their teachers, Ashley Manthei and Alyssa Somogyi.

“Marklund is a special place in our community that not many people know about,” Clarey said. “And first graders are full of love and want to learn more.”

The reaction from residents?

“It’s joyful. I think they are wondering who these people are who are coming into their space that they don’t usually see,” Clarey said.

And the students?

“It really might be the first time they get outside their comfort zone, but at the end of the trip, they are absolutely loving this very special place in our community,” Clarey wrote in an email.

Nikki Osterloh, Marklund’s manager of volunteer engagement, described Clarey as “a national treasure.”

“He’s like my favorite person I’ve ever met in my entire life,” Osterloh said.

It isn’t just the athletes and the first graders who come to Marklund because of Clarey, but others as well, Osterloh said.

“He brought his small group from his church. Grizzly Kids – the kids’ version of Kiwanis. He brought the Kaneland High School National Honor Society Club,” Osterloh said. “Last year, we almost had to cancel a game because we didn’t have enough volunteers. I texted him to ask if there was anyone he knew who could fill in. I needed 13 more volunteers. He texted, ‘I’ll take care of it. Don’t worry about it.’ ”

Twenty minutes later, all 13 spots had volunteers, she said.

Clarey’s cross country team did a drive for Marklund’s fall formal, getting all the men bowties and boutonnieres and all the women tiaras and corsages.

“He truly advocates for volunteer work himself, and he wants to get everyone else involved, too,” Osterloh said. “I wish I could carbon copy him and have 1,000 Chads.”

Clarey was Marklund’s Volunteer of the Year in 2022 and received the Inspirational Award in 2023, Osterloh said.

Manthei, who also teaches first grade at Grace McWayne, described Clarey as “the kind of teacher who puts kids first in everything he does.”

“As a coworker, he is ... always willing to help out and go the extra mile,” Manthei said. “He just wants to see how he can serve others – students, staff, community – and I think that shows with what he does with volunteering and in our own school community.”

Clarey sees his vocation as a direction from God.

“It’s his glory and my joy that I get to be a teacher and a coach,” Clarey wrote in an email. “Both have rewarded me a hundredfold, and much more than I deserve.”