Image provided by: The Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs; Warm Springs, OR
About Spilyay tymoo. (Warm Springs, Or.) 1976-current | View Entire Issue (June 4, 1998)
Warm Springs, Oregon June 4. 1998 9 Spilyay Tysioo Simnasho School students share their knowledge of Indian culture and say thank you All students learned to drum and The Warm Springs Harry Phillips, Carol Bailey and Nancy Smith, with nearly 50 years accumulative service at Warm Springs Elementary, will be retiring at the end of the 1997-1998 school year. All anticipate returning to Warm Springs to work part-time in the fu ture as substitutes. Phillips began his career at Warm Springs in 1963 as a sixth grade teacher. After eight years, he moved to Simnasho and taught third and fourth grades for three years. He re turned to Warm Springs and taught the fifth and fourth grades. Longevity for Phillips has its ad vantages. He is now teaching the children of kids he taught earlier in his career. In 1967 or 1968, Phillips began working for Fire Control as a book Harry Phillips W V n "7V ; sing songs using the big drum. ru. fcm'ii " Jz-ys-- 'rliFr Jmm - 4 J hi boys sang songs as the girls danced the butterly dance. Elementary teachers say "so keeper. "I spent 16 years up there, dispatching, time keeping and fire fighting." Some of the more memo rable fires were the Seekseequa Fire, Mutton Mountain Fire and a number of range fires. j Carol Bailey At 58-years-of-age, Phillips is re tiring because "maybe 35 years is long enough at one thing." He enjoys hunting and looks forward to hunt ing this fall. In addition, his folks are "getting older and that may require a little more help and time." "I've enjoyed all the years here. I would do it over again. Like any job, you wonder if you're doing a good job, but most of the time, I felt we made some progress." Concluding, Phillips is apprecia tive of the people of Warm Springs. 'Evervone has been nice to me. I k y, p have some real fond memories at school and at fire control." He ad vises kids and parents to "realize they have a wonderful land here with lots of resources. I'd like to see kids get out more so they can learn about it and learn to take care of it and maybe have more pride in what they have." Carol Bailey has been the Title I reading teacher in Warm Springs for the past 13 years. She works half days in Warm Springs and half-days in Madras with approximately 40 fourth grade students who have a difficult time with reading. Bailey promotes the use of com puters as a tool to increase reading skills. "I do a lot of work with com puters with the kids in teaching them to read better. When you get inter ested in working on the computer, there's a lot of learning that goes on. The kids do more than play games. There's composing stories and draw ing pictures." The kids' pieces were video taped so they could share their work with their parents. Parental involvement in a child's education is important, says Bailey. "Sometimes parents are having prob lems at home and those problems are reflected at school. I think parents always care about their kids, but sometimes they don't have an oppor tunity to help them very much be cause they're working very hard on just living. I think parents really care that their kids learn to read." Bailey will continue to work part time at Juniper Trael as a travel agent. She also plans to get in a few trips to visit her sons in AKa and Man land. Rewards of a reading teacher are great. One day on a isit to the 9 J- - x long" to school Nancy Smith Jefferson County Library, Bailey encountered one of her former stu dents checking out some books to read. One of the things Bailey discov ered early on after coming to Warm Springs was that the kids needed more work in their vocabulary and help in knowing what words meant. A study revealed that even though Indian language rrlay not be preva lent at home, kids were still influ enced by it. Out of the study came the need for full-day kindergarten, w hich has proven to be very successful for reservation students. Nancy Smith has been a special education teacher at Warm Springs for the past nine years. Smith was one of the founders of the Oregon Literacy program. After moving east. Smith taught in New York City for 1 - , bt W ' - "-. :-. Anton Moody shared his story about the bear using the Indian words. tf t 1 t ? Susie received a hug and a special card from each student. and "hello" to quite a few years and did administra tion work for the New York superin tendent of schools. She attained her degree and got into special educa tion. "I've been at it ever since." At 65, "it's time to stay home and do some projects I'd like to get in volved with." Retirement' also will include traveling with her husband Bruce, a computer consultant. Her retirement will also include promot ing the Three Sisters Reading Coun cil, Oregon Reading Association, of which she is chair. "We want to have more author's presentations, semi nars and workshops in our area to promote good reading instruction." Smith's caseload is now 45 stu dents. It's a demanding load and she regrets not being able to spend as much time with the students as she would like, "especially with ones with the problems. I have a great deal of expertise in that area and I've END OF SC HOOL BAR-B-CUE AND PLAY DAY UPPER CAMPUS NEAR THE SCHOOL THURSDAY, JUNE 4 JOIN THE FUN! Simnasho school honored Susie Slockish for teaching the Indian language to them throughout the school year. At that time students showed off what they learned to j , their parents.,,.. , , . . . Each student introduced themself , using their Indian name, which is an animal name they chose for class. The class then read their stories they made up using Indian words. Tamara Moody was given an award by the Language Program for using mostly Indian words in her story. The students showed some of the dances and songs that they learned during the year. Each student made a special card to thank Susie and she received a hug of appreciation by each student during the eating of a wonderful cake. retirement not been able to spend the time doing that kind of changing behaviors and teaching new behaviors as I would like to." Smith is particularly proud of her successes. "It's a great thrill to see those kids going on into the middle school, knowing they can read." "I would like our special educa tion students to know that they can learn to read and do math on grade level. Just because they have trouble with these subjects, they need to know they learn differently. Some students have a poor self-image and think they are dumb because they have these learning problems. They need to realize because they learn differ ently, it may take them a little longer to process information, or they may need to have instructions or direc tions repeated until it makes sense to them. They can learn and be as suc cessful as any other student." . - 11 - - .- - - "- ' - - " " ' m n 11- 1 - ' - -11 m 1 r n i - "" n