TEACHER'S CORNER: ENGLISH TEACHER USES TEAM CONCEPT

DELTA -- High School English teacher Mary Jane Blattel Kidd believes in using the team concept to help her students learn. The 16-year teaching veteran is completing her first year at Delta High School but said the team approach has always worked for her.

"I think of my classes as academic teams working together to achieve a win in life," said the wife and mother of two. "I try to keep my students active at general and specific learning activities, but the main goal is to share with them some of what I've learned over the years."

Kidd said keeping a notebook, reading a book every six weeks and learning new vocabulary words every week are basics in her academic curriculum for all of her classes. However, each class also has its own individualized curriculum.

Kidd receives gratification from her job each time a student becomes enthused about learning the various aspects of English. Gratification also comes when a student graduates and later returns to say her class helped them in college or a life experience.

"One of the best compliments I've received as a teacher came after I began teaching here about a year ago," she said. "A colleague in my former school district told me she was sorry I wouldn't be there to teach her son. That really let me know I must have been doing something right."

Kidd decided to become an English teacher while still in high school. Inspired by the literature of Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson, as well as her mother, who is a fifth-grade teacher, she decided she wanted to share her love for learning with others.