Edgewood's Kline Finalist For State Teacher Of Year
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David Slone-dslone@timesuniononline.com
Every child deserves a "Teacher of the Year" type of educator, according to Lorinda Kline.
Students in Kline's math classes at Edgewood Middle School already have one.
Kline is a top 10 finalist for Indiana Teacher of the Year. She was selected by Warsaw Community Schools to represent the corporation at the state level. She then was chosen as one of the top 10 teachers from a field of 63.Today, Kline and the other nine finalists travel to Indianapolis to be interviewed by a 15-member committee.
The winner will be announced in late September and will represent the state at the national level in Washington, D.C.
All state nominees will be honored Nov. 5 at a dinner hosted by the Indiana Dept. of Education.
The top 10 finalists were selected based on criteria that include a concern for students, the ability to inspire learning and an ability and willingness to work cooperatively with colleagues.
"Honestly," Kline said during an interview Friday afternoon, "I'm happy I get to take Warsaw to Indianapolis. I'm excited that I feel like I'm a representative for the excellence of Warsaw Community Schools. This year, I'm the lucky representative for Warsaw."
She said she worked hard on her portfolio for state competition. The 32-page portfolio is a required part of the "Teacher of the Year" process. She said she felt responsible to do her best as a representative of WCS.
It was not an easy portfolio to put together. Kline said she had to do a lot of reflection and a lot of writing. She had to address six different essays for her portfolio, each being about two pages long. Her responses also couldn't sound like a textbook, she said, because she had to address her philosophy on education in the essays.
"I was just proud to represent Warsaw," Kline said. Warsaw has had fantastic representatives for the award in the past, including four others who were state finalists, she said.
"They were all very, very supportive," said Kline.
Kline graduated from Floyd Central High School. She then attended Indiana Central College for a year.
Her father, a good teacher himself, didn't want his daughter to become a teacher, Kline said. He encouraged her to become a physical therapist to earn more respect and money. But after that first year of college, she had a talk with her father.
She told him she wanted to teach. She felt called to do it. To save her family money, she went to Indiana University Southeast in New Albany. There, she said, she had two wonderful education professors, Dr. John Moody and Dr. Bill Jamski.
"They believed in me and I didn't want to let them down," Kline said. "They were really, really great men."
For her first couple of years of teaching, Kline would imagine that they stood in the back of her room. That kept her motivated to do her best.
After graduating IUSE, Kline had a secondary science education degree, with a primary in math and a secondary in physics. She was licensed to teach both. Her first 15 years of teaching were at Lawrenceburg.
In 2001, her husband, Tom Kline, was named the principal of Lakeview Middle School. She landed a job teaching math at Edgewood. "I'm still here," she said.
Her philosophy on education centers on the believe that every child is capable of learning and everyone is special.
"One big, big philosophy of mine is that I have to believe every kid in my room has to learn, and they have to believe they can learn," she said.
Some of her students, she said, have to be taught they can learn. Once they walk into her classroom, they're one of her kids. Twenty years after they leave her classroom, they will still be one of her kids, she said.
"I think every person is a miracle. And if I treat them like the miracle they can become, they tend to act like it," Kline said.
She will be whoever her students need her to be. If they're sad, she'll be a motherly figure. If they need some motivation in the classroom, she'll light the fire underneath them.
Before having kids of her own, Kline used to coach. In the classroom, she still thinks of herself as a coach, but a math coach. She tries to empower them with math abilities, and teach them not to wave the white flag too early.
"I tell them that they're better than any math problem, so act like it," she said.
But it may not always come easy.
"There's hard work, there's no short cut," she said.
One of her biggest success stories happened a year before coming to Warsaw Schools. She was given seven high school juniors who needed to pass the ISTEP test or wouldn't graduate. She said they were really defeated, but they ended up teaching her more than she taught them, she said.
The seven students though smart kids just read something once and instantly got it. They didn't realize, Kline said, that students who excelled well in the classroom had strategies for doing well, like reading material more than once or keeping a chart on information. She had to teach them strategies for learning.
"My biggest shining moment was being able to tell them they has passed," Kline said. "... I think I became a better teacher that year."
Even with the Teacher of the Year nomination, Kline repeatedly praised Warsaw Community Schools Friday for being a great school system to teach in. Her own kids attend Warsaw schools.
"My own kids go here," she said. "I really think it's a top-notch school program."
