SLC kindergarten teacher calls it a career after 51 years
SALT LAKE City — Friday brought a tender farewell for a 5-ten years-extended teacher.
Louise Bitner begun instructing Kindergarten in 1971. She taught at Rosslyn Heights Elementary for 32 several years right up until the faculty closed down. She used her very last two a long time at Dilworth Elementary.
“I appreciate the songs, the PE, the art, learning about authors and examining to the little ones,” Louise Bitner stated. “I appreciate it all! I grew up in a home wherever education was these a precedence.”
Bitner has an electrical power that matches the kids she has taught for decades.
“It is fun. Day-to-day is a new journey. And little ones react to good praise,” Bitner reported.
On Friday the youngsters gathered around Bitner to would like her properly all through her retirement. The hugs were limitless.
“As an incoming kindergartner, I was so nervous to go to university. I had anxiety.” Summer months Chatwin reported. “Miss Bitner created me experience needed at school. She gave me objective.”
Chatwin was in Bitner’s class in 1983. Now her young children go to Dilworth exactly where Bitner teaches.
“We had lived out of state for awhile. A couple of decades again I was registering a kindergartner and 3rd grader at Dilworth Elem.,” Chatwin explained. “I walked in the doors and there was Skip Bitner. She promptly, without the need of skipping a beat, mentioned ‘Hi Summer time! Are you coming to this school?’ I hadn’t found her for 20 decades. But she remembered me. She invests in men and women. She shares appreciate at each convert.”
Now the former college student has become a mother or father who volunteers in Bitner’s classroom.
“She has grow to be a wonderful good friend of mine as an grownup.” Chatwin said. “It’s a single of the most awesome journeys of a mentor turning out to be a buddy.”
The line of moms and dads to thank Bitner prolonged outdoors, Friday. In every single exchange, Bitner referenced moms and dads, grandparents, existing and previous students. She flawlessly remembered every name appropriately.
“People say how do you don’t forget? I say how do you overlook? When you have appeared at a great tiny encounter for 180 times, they come to be aspect of your planet,” Bitner mentioned.
When asked what the greatest modify to the classroom has been in the past 51 a long time, Bitner outlined a increase in self-assurance for some students and an enhance in stress and anxiety for some others. She also mentioned the have to have to concentration more on manners.
“The very first thoughts I made use of to be questioned at father or mother teacher conference 51 decades back integrated: ‘Is my boy or girl respectful to you? Are they well mannered in course? Are they effectively behaved? Are they wonderful to the other students?’ Individuals are thoughts I not often get questioned any more,” Bitner claimed.
Bitner was the winner of a Huntsman Training Award in 1998. She has already signed up to volunteer and substitute at Dilworth up coming faculty calendar year.
