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Education is a family affair for Jack and Darlene Bartels. On Friday, the Bowie couple will finish their careers at the same school where they started: Ascension Lutheran School.

Jack, 64, and Darlene, 63, will retire from the Landover Hills school where he served as a teacher from 1966 to 1973 before becoming principal for 36 years and where she spent more than 30 years as a kindergarten teacher.

Both met at Concordia Teacher's College, a Lutheran college in Seward, Neb., and married in California, Darlene Bartels' home state. The National Office of the Lutheran Church assigned Jack Bartels to a teaching job at Ascension Lutheran School in 1966. He taught third and sixth grades and physical education before becoming principal in the fall of 1973.

"I became principal when I was 29," he said. "I felt a little bit young. One of the main challenges at that time was being a superior of my peers."

Darlene Bartels began teaching half-day kindergarten in 1967 and left in 1973 after her first daughter, Bridget, was born. She had three more children — Jeremy, Matthew and Courtney. When she returned in 1984, the program transitioned into a full-day kindergarten after more stay-at-home moms became working moms in the mid-1970s, she said. She still teaches piano after school and helps plan the school yearbook.

All four of their children graduated from Ascension Lutheran School and two, Bridget and Matthew, were married in the church. Jack Bartels said his children never played the "my dad is a principal" card to get out of trouble. Darlene Bartels taught their youngest, Courtney.

Darlene Bartels said music is her classroom staple and she wants students to experience rhythms and dance at an early age. She said students still perform an annual Thanksgiving play she wrote in the late 1960s and did so even during her leave to take care of her children.

"One of my challenges as a teacher is being true to early childhood [education] in terms that a child's school year should be a journey, not a race and balancing society's paperwork versus children experiencing social and emotional contact with another," she said.

Jack Bartels, also the boys basketball coach, said children have not really changed and still have the same curiosities and the same basic need: to be loved. Both he and Darlene Bartels especially enjoy "grand students," grandchildren of former students.

"You can see their parents over and over in most of them and that's what makes it fun," he said.

Eighth-grader Aryn Sydnor, 13, of Silver Spring said both she and her father had Darlene Bartels as a kindergarten teacher. She remembers an animated Darlene Bartels who brought books read in story time to life and played kickball with her kindergarten class.

"She was involved with our activities and related to us by being active," Aryn said.

Eighth-grader Stephen Haselton, 14, of Glenn Dale remembers Darlene Bartels as a patient teacher and Jack Bartels as someone who made the school feel like a family.

"I felt like I could trust him," Haselton said. "If I needed to talk to him he was always someone I could talk to."

The couple will still be familiar faces at Ascension Lutheran Church since they are congregation members, but they plan to schedule more time with their grandchildren and to travel. Both will miss the "hustle and bustle" of a regular school day.

"I'll miss the good mornings and the hugs and the honesty of little ones to be able to just share with you," Darlene Bartels said.

E-mail Natalie McGill at nmcgill@gazette.net.