Fredrickson nominated as Teacher of Year

by Dave DeMars

news@thenewsleaders.com

Sitting in her high school Leadership and Personal Development class, teacher Karrie Fredrickson agreed to do an interview with the Sartell-St. Stephen Newsleader, but she had little time to talk. Her students, spread out in groups, worked diligently on a project, and Fredrickson had to juggle her time between the interview and her work as a hands-on kind of teacher, constantly helping the groups of students in their problem-solving projects.

“I’m a hands-on kind of teacher, so kids get lots of problem-solving projects,” Fredrickson said.

After 22 years of teaching, Fredrickson still finds a way to connect with kids and make learning interesting and fun. “Connect” and “making a connection” are words Fredrickson will use often during our conversation. For Fredrickson, being able to connect is one of the key reasons she was nominated as Minnesota Teacher of the Year by her peers.

In a time when many teachers are teaching for five years and then getting out of the profession (the result of a program designed to attract enough people into the profession to staff the nation’s classrooms) Fredrickson’s story is the reverse of that.

“I did not [start out to be a teacher], I thought I would be a great big international business lady,” Fredrickson said, with a hearty laugh. “I went to St. Ben’s for business, and realized all my favorite classes were social-studies classes. For a while I wondered what I was going to do with that.”

Development

It was her college advisor who suggested she think about teaching and taking a clinical experience. She loved it and as they say, “The rest is history.”

Once bitten by the teaching bug, Fredrickson went right to work getting her student-teaching experience at Sartell and was hired by the district right out of school. Her entire experience has been in the Sartell-St. Stephen district, and that in itself is unusual.

“I think there’s a lot more movement today, and a lot of teachers who don’t stay teachers very long,” she said. “For some it’s the stress of the job, and for others, you either connect with kids or you don’t.”

Fredrickson searches for and finds that way to connect. And it’s that ability to connect that keeps her fired with enthusiasm for teaching. Her excitement and commitment are almost palpable when she talks about students. She glanced quickly around at the students in her Leadership class, then returns to her conversation during the Newsleader interview.

“I think kids today are awesome,” she said. “I love them. They are very talented and insightful. The kids I work with today are of all ability levels and they all are just fun to work with. They are sponges for what we can give them, but they also teach me something every day.”

Asked about differences between today’s school and when she first walked through the doors of Sartell-St. Stephen High School, she said it was a matter of size.

“When I first came to Sartell we had a smaller school,” she said. “We were only a little over 700 kids. It was different. My class sizes were really small. And I liked that because I felt like I got to know every individual kid really well.”

Class sizes are larger now, she said. One of her advanced placement classes has 34 kids in it. With the pace of the class and the rigor of the class, it makes it harder for her to make that connection with her kids. When she started teaching back in 1994, she had one class of 17 and her largest class was 22.

Philosophy and style

She explained what she meant by the term connection and why making the connection is the secret to being a successful teacher.

“It’s when I get to know kids on a more personal basis,” she said. “I get to know more about their family. I think if kids know you care about them, they care more about what we are doing in here. When you can make the connection with your kids, it sets the climate of the school. When kids know they are a part of something, they are invested, too.”

While Fredrickson is willing to talk about education and her philosophy, she is not one to toot her own horn, so when asked about how she felt about being nominated as Teacher of the Year, she giggled a bit and shifted nervously in her seat.

“I’m kind of a background person,” she said. “I mean I do a lot of things in our school like student council and NHS [National Honor Society] but I’m kind of in the background.”

She went on to explain how she was completely surprised when she got the manila envelope containing the nomination papers. There’s lots of paper work connected to the award and some of it entails asking fellow teachers, students and administrators for their input. She said she felt somewhat self-conscious asking recommendations from fellow teachers.

“It’s not that it’s embarrassing, but I’m just not that kind of person,” she said. “But the process is interesting because you have to be reflective about what is your actual teaching style, and I guess I don’t think about that every day.”

Her own experience of being a student in school was a positive one. Originally a native of St. Joseph, Fredrickson attended Apollo High School in St. Cloud back when “they had open mods.” She loved the system because she didn’t have class every day and it taught her to manage her time. As much as she enjoyed her classes, she also enjoyed the social aspect of school and that was also a very important part of her school experience.

“It’s not just all academics,” she said. “You have to have some fun in school, too.”

Asked about the general preparedness of kids graduating from high school and the current public criticism of schools and whether schools were failing as some people allege, Fredrickson didn’t duck the question.

“I don’t think we are [failing], looking at it in the sense that kids aren’t performing,” she said. “I think we are looking at it as where we need to help different groups of kids. So we’re looking at testing, and we’re looking at how much growth kids have had in a year, and that’s our job to help them. If we see they are not making it in an area, how can we help them get to a proficient level within a given time period?”

In her Leadership and Personal Development class she tries to help kids recognize their own strengths and abilities and how they can best use them to develop their own leadership style. What makes a good leader, she said, is the ability of a person to recognize talent in other people and get them to join their team. It’s being concerned with the whole group and not just concern for one’s own success and glory. It’s what teachers do every day, she added.

“I think we have wonderful teacher leaders,” she said. “That’s one of the best things about working at Sartell. I work with some of the best people, and I feel I learn from them everyday.”

Spare time

She said her husband loves the fact she is a teacher, but he doesn’t love all the time she spends at school. And Fredrickson spends a lot of time at school.

“I’m usually here until six, seven, sometimes eight at night – every night,” she said. “I want my students to do something that – I don’t do the same thing every single year, so I research and find new activities. If I do it here, I know I will do it. If I go home, I don’t always get to them.”

So what does a nominee for Teacher of the Year do in her spare time? She admits during the summer she tends to stay up late and sleep late in the mornings. In her spare time during the summer, she spends time at a camper on Leech Lake paddle-boarding and skiing. Most of all she loves to travel, but even traveling is often done with students. She has taken student groups to England, Ireland, Wales, Switzerland and Italy. If she couldn’t be a teacher, she said, she would like to be a travel agent. While she likes to travel, she said she is most fortunate to be a teacher for one major reason.

“I get to do what I love all the time,” she said. “It’s fun every day. I may get tired, but I’m never tired of school.”