Ms. Craft

30 Year Journey of Reward and Sacrifice

First off, what’s your name and where are you from?

My name is Ruth Craft and actually, here in Minneapolis. But it has been all over the metro area. I was born in Minneapolis, but then my family moved to Richfield. After that we moved again to Roseville. However, I started my teaching career in Wisconsin and just naturally found my way back to Minneapolis, which might be where I end my career[1]. I attended Concordia college which is now Concordia University for my undergraduate degree in elementary education and a minor in art. And then when I went to get my masters later down the road, it was through the University of Minnesota here in the Twin Cities, which was a masters in emotional and behavioral studies.

When did you know you wanted to become a teacher?

Probably later into college, because originally I started out planning to go into dentistry, which is a huge switch since one is science based. But I come from a family full of teachers, so eventually I just followed the family way. I have a few aunts who were teachers and a great aunt as well. And even my mother wanted to become a teacher but she couldn’t because she was raising our family. So becoming a teacher was just a natural feeling and I have been in the education system for 25 years now.  

Through your 25 years of teaching, what has been the most impacting experience you've had with students?

Going on home visits, for sure. When I was a special education teacher[2], I would go on home visits so I could complete paperwork for the school district. When I went on these visits, I would see how some students were living and the situations they were in. I had an experience when I ended up sitting on the floor. There were three people in this small one bedroom apartment, a social worker, the mother and me. Those two sat on a mattress that was on the ground, and I sat on the floor next to them so that we could have a meeting. It was a shocking situation, there was no other furniture in the apartment that I could see. And it was bizarre because on the wall above me was a photo of the social worker, a photo of me, and a photo of the child, all taped on the wall of this downstairs apartment. Earlier the child had asked me for one of my photos and I was confused but of course said ok. But it was weird seeing my picture on the wall of this little apartment. There's a lot more to that story, but…. I can't go into it.

How has teaching changed over the course of your career?

You know, teaching has changed a lot since I first started and got my licenses. Basically I have had 30 years with my time in both Wisconsin and my time in Minneapolis. Before it used to be that you got a teacher manual and you just did the specific lesson that was listed, and there weren't a lot of resources. When I started you had a chalkboard, a globe and one of those pull down maps that were enlarged for people in the back to see. But now with the internet, you have access to a lot more resources that you can use in your lessons to make them more interactive and visually interesting for the kids. That parts wonderful, but it also means that Minneapolis uses “Focused Instruction” which says, “These are the state standards, how you choose to fill those standards out is up to you. Here is the math manual that comes from the district and here is our reading material.” However, you're not tied to those, so you don't take them in any particular sequence. You do what the standards say to complete and go with the materials that best fits with your teaching and student’s ability to learn. There’s more flexibility but less direction, especially for incoming teachers, it can be a struggle.

What would you tell someone pursuing a teaching degree that is our age?

It is difficult and can be frustrating, but also rewarding and fun. You will feel a lot of disrespect through the media, because you will hear a lot of people say “Oh you are a teacher, anyone can do that.” They say that because they think they have been in the classroom and they saw what teachers do. But they were always on the other side of the desk, learning and listening, where I am planning and grading, things that take up a good majority of my free time. Through your schooling you learn how to control behavior of various children and drive learning. Learning does not happen if you don’t have the behavior of those acting out set straight. So it’s a constant battle between driving the learning so you can keep behavior down and keeping behavior down so you can drive the learning.

With that being said, what has been your favorite memory while teaching?

Teaching science to children, especially young children. Specifically, I like to pull in things that are not a part of our curriculum, this being where more flexibility comes from, you know not having manuals but also having standards to complete. So in science, for example, we will do weird things like bake bread. I will tie it in very loosely because we will be examining solids and liquids. So I take some liquids and I mix them with a few solids, and I apply heat. The kids will then see a change and we make a loaf of bread, right there in the classroom. Yes it is in a bread machine that sits on the floor because that is all we have access to, so it has to be done there. But there's a lot of children who haven't experienced that at all, you know, making bread instead of buying it. For them it’s totally amazing. We've done the same thing with butter. Put heavy whipping cream in a container and screw the lid on tight. I will have them shake it and shake it, and they're blown away. They can't believe that they’ve done this. We’ve also made ice cream in the spring time for a yummy treat. When I've done the bread making unit, I combine yeast, sugar, and hot water, and put it all in a Ziploc bag. They watch it over the course of the morning as the Ziploc bag starts looking like a helium balloon, and they realize air is matter, and matter takes up space. And here is an example in front of them which is a wow factor again. It's just a little baggie, but I discovered it stuck them. One year I organized the entire grade school floor to make bread on the same day, this was when we were a smaller building. And I went around to each class and did this experiment. And my fifth graders were still able to say, “Well air is matter, and matter takes up space.” So it connected and it stayed with them, for more than three years which is a pretty cool thing for a teacher to see and hear, that something I conducted in the past, they still think is interesting and can remember. It helps them connect it to the real world and other science experiments. It really makes learning fun which is when you want to be there, and most proud to be a teacher!

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[1] Ms. Craft met with us on a Friday morning, where she originally took the day off from teaching to go meet with a retirement counselor about hopefully ending her almost 30-year career of teaching

[2] For a good portion of Ms. Craft’s career, she bounced around between jobs. She didn’t always teach second grade. Ms. Craft taught special education for many years, doing all subjects but sometimes focusing on math, science and reading. She realized that this took a specific type of person to teach special education, so she found her way back to Pratt Community Elementary.  

All photos taken from www.http://pratt.mpls.k12.mn.us