At an early age, Mark Franke knew that he wanted to be a teacher.

“When I was younger, I used to help my sister with homework. It was something that came natural to me and I was happy I could help her. That feeling of helping others that are struggling with math in particular was something I wanted to pursue as a career down the road possibly,” Franke said.

Franke is one of the several new teachers at Windsor this year.

He graduated from the University of Illinois in 1996, which soon led him to become a teacher.

Franke has taught for 20 years at several area schools, including: Clayton High School, Hancock High School, Valmeyer High School, Columbia High School, East St. Louis High School and now Windsor High School.

Franke is no stranger to principal Jason Naucke. The two previously worked together at Hancock High School.

“I have known Mark Franke for almost 20 years,” Naucke said.

Naucke is happy to have him at Windsor High School.

“Franke was a math teacher at Hancock High School and my first 12 years of my career were at Hancock High School. In the 8 years that I was either an assistant principal or a principal at Hancock, Franke was one of our math teachers and he did an awesome job. He was our math department chair, he taught ACT classes, he did a lot of our honors math classes and he even taught history classes.”