A Novice Who’s a Pro

When the state Legislature challenged local school districts to reduce class sizes in lower grades, it touched off a mad scramble for more rooms and more teachers. As demand outran the supply of experienced, credentialed teachers, many with lesser qualifications were pressed into service anyway. Concerns were raised about their ability to do the job.

So it is so encouraging that one of those raw recruits has been recognized as the state’s best new teacher by the Student Loan Marketing Assn., better known as Sallie Mae, the nation’s leading supplier of education financing.

Heidi M. Haines, a 34-year-old Ventura resident who teaches third grade at Parkview Elementary School in Port Hueneme, was granted the First Class Teacher Award. The honor salutes those who have been teachers for one year or less.

Haines came to Hueneme School District under an emergency plan to fill vacancies created by class downsizing. During the school year, she was also finishing student teaching requirements at Cal State Northridge.

Her award-winning teaching style blends enthusiasm and creativity with an insistence that parents get involved. Within the first few weeks of school she met with each students’ parents and later followed up by visiting several at their homes, sending electronic mail to others and setting up a class Web page. In the classroom, she took students on an online river trip of the Grand Canyon to learn geology and helped to start the Parkview Press Club, an online school newspaper for students whose writing skills need help.

Teaching, Haines says, “is a lot about stomping out fires and making things happen.”

Heidi Haines is clearly a teacher who makes things happen. With more pros like her in the classroom, Ventura County’s students would be off to a good start indeed.