Agrees with David Baker

Editor’s note: Linda Compton is reacting to a Spectrum piece written by David Baker and published in Friday’s Frontiersman.

To the editor:

It was so refreshing to see someone speak the truth about the district’s effort to teach us how to care about kids. Like David Baker said, either you embrace your students or you just get through the days complaining about everyone and everything. I was going to compare the idea of teaching teachers how to care to telling parents how to care about their kids - if you need that training, you’re in a bad spot.

The idea of paying all these presenters, feeding all of the district employees and renting a place big enough to offer enough seating — on covered ice, even —parking, parking attendants, and police officers to regulate traffic is an attempt that administrators make to feel they are impacting the front lines of contact with students.

I shudder to think how much this bill was for the taxpayers. I enjoyed our building in-service w/ Flip Flippen — yep, that’s his real name. I felt it brought our staff closer, but again, you can’t teach people to care and connect in their approach to students. Only two weeks into the school year the same grumpy teachers were back to their same routines with students begging to get transferred out of their class.

My job as a teacher is important, I get the privilege of interacting with our future everyday, and every year it gets better. I would so appreciate a day locked in my classroom for planning lessons (yes, they can lock me in — with bathroom breaks, of course) than being forced to attend a class on how to teach with passion. You either have it or you don’t.

Linda Compton

Wasilla, AK