Four teachers representing a wide diversity of life and teaching experiences have joined the staff of the Haines Borough School District for the coming year.
TAMMY HAMILTON
For second-grade teacher Tammy Hamilton, taking a job here feels like coming home. Hamilton grew up in Juneau and is the granddaughter of Hank and Edith Jacquot of Haines. She moved to Haines three years ago and student taught first-graders last year, so she already knows many of her students.
She holds a biology degree she earned while contemplating dental school. Instead, she earned a teaching certificate after her daughter entered kindergarten.
Hamilton has lived in Ashland, Ore., Colorado Springs, Colo., Bellingham, Wash., and Pensacola, Fla., and most recently taught third- and fourth-graders in Port Charlotte, Fla. “We wanted to see the country, but it was just time to come home. Nowhere else felt right anymore.”
Besides family connections, she’s looking forward to a network of supporting, local teachers and aims to make students feel welcome in her class.
Her students will work on “lots of addition and subtraction,” and numbers up to 1,000, while learning concepts like place value and money. She intends to incorporate lessons about totems and Tlingit culture and history, and – using her biology background – ones about the human body.
She said she places a strong emphasis on independent learning, but that comes after reaching students on an emotional level.
“You have to find ways to reach students, and find fun, novel pathways to learning,” she said. Students in her class will use iPads weekly and may be using them more in the second half of the year to research topics. “Kids with computers feel like they’re playing. They’re so adept at technology, even at this age.”
Second-graders read at a range of skill levels, she said. “I’ll be reading to them at their level and above their level for vocabulary and they’ll be doing lots of independent reading.” Writing is where language skills grow the most, she said. “It’s really about having an idea and expanding on that idea.”
KRISTY TOTTEN
Kristy Totten is the district’s new music teacher, leading as many as eight band groups, including the school pep band, and seven choruses in grades 4-12. She’ll also serve as senior class advisor. She sings and plays piano, clarinet, saxophone and flute.
Totten was hired just two weeks ago, and was reluctant about making any statements about longevity here. Turnover has been chronic in the job.
“I’m approaching the job with a lot of enthusiasm and thoughts to the long-term and commitment. But we’ll just have to see how it goes,” she said. “It’s a big job and I was a late hire, so it’s been a bit chaotic.”
Totten holds a music degree from the University of Denver and came to Alaska as an itinerant music teacher on Prince of Wales Island in 1980, flying between six schools. Her accomplishments included organizing a 48-member band in the logging community of Labouchere Bay near Point Baker, and taking the first contingent of students from the Southeast Islands school district to the regional music festival.
“It was great. It was a perfect job for somebody who likes to travel around, and the kids really liked it,” she said.
A visit to Africa at the time inspired her to take work at the International School in Nairobi, Kenya. She spent two years developing the school’s music program and also contracted malaria and met her future husband, Dr. John Totten, a surgeon from Scotland. The family moved to Washington state and then Sitka, where Kristy worked as business manager for the private practice John had there 20 years.
In Sitka, she finished a degree in elementary education, gave piano lessons 12 years, led a choir at Mount Edgecumbe School, taught music two years at Sheldon Jackson College, and chaired the committee that led construction of Sitka’s new $13 million performing arts hall. She has run every leg of the Klondike International Road Relay and has pedaled in the Kluane-Chilkat International Bike Relay.
She and her husband, who have two grown children, spent much of the past four years sailing their 48-foot cutter sailboat in the South Pacific.
Totten said took the job here because she missed the classroom. “I really like teaching. You see the years go by. I wanted to get back in the classroom and use my skills.”
Totten said her philosophy is “to encourage students to explore the music in a hands-on way” including exploring things like classical and Gregorian chant. “I tell kids, ‘You don’t know what you like until you give it a chance and listen to it. You don’t know what you can play until you get involved.’”
PETER DEGEN
Peter Degen will teach middle school math and science and a health class. He holds a bachelor’s degree in agriculture and resource management and besides teaching, has worked as a park ranger, boating safety instructor, and environmental protection official in Wisconsin. In the latter job he worked with polluting industries on cleanup efforts.
“I decided I’d rather spend my time with middle school students than lawyers,” he said.
He has taught middle school and high school math, science, biology and anatomy in the past 23 years, including in Madison, Wis., Leadville, Colo. and Crownpoint, N.M. A hunter and fisherman who skis and hikes, Degen said he and his wife and pet dogs came to Alaska on the trail of an adult son who works as a geologist at Greens Creek mine.
“I just like being outside. Fancy restaurants and shows aren’t our hobbies, so we’re just fine here,” Degen said.
He said he has no canned teaching philosophy. “What’s right for one kid isn’t right for another. What’s right for me one year may not work in another. I like seeing how to fit into a particular location and situation.”
He said he’ll take a traditional approach to science here until he gets a feel for the community and what project-type lessons are appropriate. Degen will teach a “middle-level” math course to students in grades 6-8 that includes applying pre-algebra skills to work problems. Students will learn how to describe things as variables, sequences and patterns, he said.
A favorite teaching moment he related came when he was explaining particle physics to an eighth-grader, who – without instruction – grasped matter flying apart. “She learned beyond where we’d taught her. She used her imagination to imagine what the potential of all this was. That’s what it’s about. We want to teach kids things, but we want them to go further with it. We want them to take it to the next grand idea that helps society.”
KATE BAERLOCHER
Kate Baerlocher is serving as a one-year substitute for Mosquito Lake School teacher Kathy Holmes.
She holds a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice and psychology and earned a master’s degree in teaching three years ago. She taught the last two years in Kotlik.
Baerlocher once aspired to be a criminal profiler but her interest leaned toward education and she worked for six years in outdoor camps. She also taught dance and waitressed in the Seattle area, where she grew up. She came to Alaska, she said, in part because she wanted to teach a diversity of students. Her nine students this year range from kindergarten through fifth grade.
She expects a challenge figuring out teaching students who are at different grade levels, developing a learning plan for each, but said one of her strengths is being able to determine what individual students need.
“Every kid deserves the same high level of education. They all deserve the same opportunity,” she said.
She has inherited Holmes’ basic curricula for science, math and reading, she said. “Kathy definitely gave me freedom, which is great,” Baerlocher said.
Math and language arts are taught on an individual level at the school, and social studies and science loan themselves to group lessons. “Life in a Pond” and “The Solar System” will be among quarterly science topics, she said.
Students should expect to do a lot of reading, some instructing in cooking and maybe a friendly “Battle of the Books” competition against her former students in Kotlik, she said.
Baerlocher arrived here Aug. 5. “Everybody has been super friendly and welcoming. I really appreciate that.”
She’ll be living on Mosquito Lake Road, a short distance from the school.