Tamira Madsen
In his job as an educator, Ted Widerski left an indelible imprint on the lives of many Madison Metropolitan School District students. Friends and family are remembering Widerski as an exemplary teacher and person as they come to terms with his unexpected death at age 56 on June 29. Widerski suffered a massive heart attack at his Cambridge home.
Widerski was so influential to Bailey Wundrow during her prep years at La Follette High School that she followed in his footsteps and became a math teacher. Besides being Wundrow’s homeroom teacher for four years, Widerski laid a strong foundation for Wundrow with math as she prepared to pursue an education degree at his alma mater, the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Wundrow, a 2002 La Follette graduate, recently completed her second year teaching math at Verona High School. She said Widerski set an example she wanted to follow. “He enjoyed what he did every day,” Wundrow said. “He sold me on that end of teaching. He wrote me a letter of recommendation for (UW) Madison and I told him I wanted to teach. He always joked, ‘I’ll wait and when I retire and you graduate, you can have my job.’ ”
Widerski got a bachelor’s degree in 1973 from UW-Madison and received a master’s degree in math education from UW-Milwaukee in 1976. He taught in Green Bay and Waterloo and eventually became a school principal in Waterloo before starting in Madison 12 years ago. Widerski taught at La Follette for seven years and joined the school district’s Talented and Gifted (TAG) program three years ago as a resource teacher. Widerski oversaw programming for talented students at the middle and high school levels.
He also was instrumental in creating the district’s first MathFests, events that gave students the opportunity to compete individually and in groups to decipher math problems. Welda Simousek, who will retire in August as coordinator of the Talented and Gifted program, said her staff will create a fund in Widerski’s name so the MathFest competition can be held on an annual basis.
2 thoughts on “Madison teacher’s impact fondly recalled”
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Thank you for posting this, Jeff. I first saw it last night and was thrilled to see Ted honored. The article really focused on his impact as a LaFollette teacher, so I saw a side of him that I had not seen before.
What is amazing is that there could have been at least ten other articles of equal length on other distinct areas where Ted was a significant force.
There are not many people whose loss would be felt as keenly as the loss that we are feeling over Ted. He was a rare soul, and a friend and colleague who will be very very hard to replace.
I posted this at madison.com too, but I was afraid it might not be seen there anymore. We are out of town, so I did not see this when it was first posted here. I wanted to copy over my response from madison.com. I hope his family and close friends know well how deeply we will miss him and what a shock it was for us to hear of his death.
We really cared for Ted. Our kids are extremely sensitive to whether or not they are being taken seriously or just being humored. They were immediately impressed with Ted and trusted him implicitly. He was instrumental in getting our middle school son’s needs recognized as a child with special educational needs on the high end if the autism spectrum and ALSO with great academic gifts. We have had greater hope in the last two years, that the MMSD gifted and talented education team could get children’s deep needs for challenge recognized in more than just mathematics, largely because of Ted (hmm, and Welda as well!). It would be a wondrous recognition of his influence and his enthusiasm if we were somehow able to return to an earlier commitment to grow our TAG resources in all academic areas, in spite of recent cuts.
Ted was a deeply good soul in many ways, and he will be missed by so very many people: in particular by those who knew him as educator and a colleague in caring for children in all circumstances.