teaching one another: A new school year offers teachers new ways to educate and build relationships

Linderman Elementary School Principal Tim Finkbeiner stood between a gymnasium full of youthful faces excited to start the new school year Wednesday.

In the crowd, scores of smiles showcased happy demeanors and missing teeth. Hundreds of hands busied themselves in the laps of children, teachers and support staff ready to take on the treasures they will discover at school this year.

Among the students present were those who belong to second-grade teacher Darcie Laud.

Laud’s class will get a never-before and never-again experience this year that was

hand-crafted with love by Laud and good family friends Diana and Chris Hughes.

That is because the three-person team turned her regular everyday classroom into “Camp Elemen O-P,” a camping-themed learning environment where her students will spend the year engaging with a variety of learning games and activities tied together with the camping theme.

Laud said she chose the camping theme because most of her kids were familiar with the idea of camping and could better relate to learning when it existed in a thematic format.

Finkerbeiner embraces the creativity of his staff members who face teaching this year’s large group of Polson School District children in tight spaces. 

And the elementary school student body continues to swell. On the first day of school Finkerbeiner said he had a string of students enrolling for the first time. 

Five students enrolled the night before school began and another 15 enrolled on the first day of school. 

That is why he is so thankful for the great group of students who attend.

This year’s fourth-grade class is one of the biggest classes in the school district.

“But they are the most disciplined too,” Finkerbeiner said. “They provide me right today. That fourth-grade class is just spectacular. They are good group of students.”

With a total student body of roughly 435 students, Finkerbeiner said more than 150 are in fourth grade.

To accommodate all those kids Finkerbeiner did some creative rearranging. His music teacher’s classroom is located in front of the gymnasium and has to box up his class each time the area is needed.

All Title I Program teachers are displaced, he said. The speech class is held in a library closet; Alta Care is held in the boy’s locker room.

“We are bulging,” Finkerbeiner said. 

Though district administrators are hard at work trying to accommodate the school’s student-body needs, staff and students are making due with a good attitude.

“It’s been fun,” Finkerbeiner said. “But we have a good mix of kids and other greats have been great.”

Finkerbeiner explained that older students can teach younger students how to behave in school. The fourth-grade class members are mentors to their counterparts in second and third grade.

“Fourth graders are a good group for second and third grade to look up to, they are role models all the way through school,” he said.

One of Finkerbeiner’s most coveted fourth-grade behaviors are their lunch manners.

“Man, they are so well behaved,” he said. “I go into the lunch room every day it’s a very relaxing place to be. And when it gets a little loud and I raise my hand it is quiet. Last year they were the third-grade class and they knew what to do and what had to be done.”

Finkerbeiner said he saw last year’s students remind each other how to follow the rules, police each other when they became too loud, stand up for themselves and learn to talk with one another.”