Jun. 6—LAPWAI — Master teacher Carleen Baldwin had this piece of wisdom to share about how to be a good teacher: “Sometimes it’s not about what you are going to teach them. Sometimes you’ve just got to hold them and let them know they are loved.”
Baldwin, 62, is retiring after 36 years teaching at Lapwai Elementary School. She considers the community where the Nez Perce Tribe’s government headquarters is located to be her family.
That’s a feeling that goes both ways, Baldwin said.
She was honored recently at a district-wide powwow for schools. The leaders asked people to stand if Baldwin had taught them or touched their lives. “There were not many people left in the bleachers,” she said, figuring she has taught more than 800 students over the years in third, fourth and fifth grades.
This year’s fifth grade class was particularly special.
“This year was a very amazing class because we were one family together this year,” she said. “I taught a lot of their parents and I taught their grandparents too.”
Baldwin, whose maiden name was Funke, graduated in 1981 from Deary High School. After earning her teaching degree, she spent one year teaching in Arizona. She moved back to Idaho and worked for a couple years at Camelot Elementary School in Lewiston.
In 1989, she applied for the Lapwai job. Her high school sports experience gave her a connection to the interviewer, Bob Sobotta Sr., who became Lapwai School District superintendent in 1992. Sobotta remembered her from when he refereed her basketball games in Deary.
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“Bob Sobotta Sr. interviewed me,” Baldwin said. “He called me up on the morning of my wedding and gave me the best wedding present he could have given me and that was my job at Lapwai.”
She married Toby Baldwin, who runs a construction company.
She said she fit in right away, partly because kids can tell if their teachers really care.
“The kids understand that you are there for them and you’re there to build that environment for them to grow and to be safe,” she said. Kids have a way of weeding out the less-committed teachers, she added.
Baldwin is a “math specialist,” which gives her a sense of fulfillment: “I love seeing their eyes light up and to hear them say, ‘Thanks, I didn’t understand that but now I do.'”
Baldwin hopes to keep working part-time in Lapwai, perhaps as a paraprofessional.
“I thoroughly love to work in the community, and the culture, where they stand behind everybody and every child is family.”
Ferguson can be reached at dferguson@lmtribune.com.