Maria Moynihan, Saint John the Baptist Middle School teacher, retires

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Maria Moynihan

Numerous administrative, faculty and staff members of Utah Catholic Schools retired or move on to other employment as the 2023-24 academic year ended. In past issues we featured departing principals, as well as faculty and staff who have been with Utah Catholic Schools for 20 years or more. Here is the last one of them.

DRAPER — After 24 years at St. John the Baptist Elementary and St. John the Baptist Middle School, Maria Moynihan has retired.

Moynihan first came to the Skaggs Catholic Center in 2000 as a second-grade teacher in the elementary school. In 2009 she moved over to the middle school and began to teach sixth-grade religion. Later, she moved on to teaching religion to eighth-graders, the position from which she retired.

Since the beginning, Moynihan felt called by God to serve as a Catholic educator and, with her husband Tom, to prepare their daughters to also teach in Utah Catholic Schools, she said.

“Maria has been a gift to our campus and there are no words that can truly express the depth of emotions that come with knowing how many lives she has inspired over the years both students and parents alike,” said April van der Sluys, the Skaggs Catholic Center Schools’s director of advancement. “All of us who have been blessed to have students in Maria’s class over the years can certainly relate and, simply put, are grateful for the gift of her answering the call to educate. She is among the few ‘once-in-a-lifetime educators,’ and anyone who knows Maria has a beautiful story to share about that time they had her as their teacher or had a child in her classroom.”

With some of her grandchildren now students at the Skaggs Catholic Center, Moynihan feels that the time is right to continue her vocation as a mother, teacher and grandmother by being home with her grandchildren, she said.