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Teachers' Assistant Celebrates 40 Years at Binns Elementary School
Feb. 20, 2020 -- Binns Elementary School and teachers' assistant Anne Baker are a perfect match. So much of a perfect fit that Anne is celebrating her 40th year in the classroom.
“I just love Binns. I love the parents here, and the kids,” she said.
Baker says she loves Binns Elementary School so much that, in fact, it has been the only school she has worked in. In 1980, at the age of 18, Baker applied for an instructional assistant position with the District at Binns.
“And I’ve been here ever since, I never left,” said Anne. “I’ve been in the library. I was a library assistant for a while. It was the PEAK Room back then, now it is the PBIS. When we didn’t have kindergarten aides to start with I was in first grade. Then I went to kindergarten when they went to kindergarten full time.”
Working with kindergarteners is what she loves most.
“They come in to us, a lot of them can’t write their name. They don’t know their letters or their numbers. Some went to preschool, some didn't, but when they leave me they are reading,” she says.
“I would encourage her to stay as long as she can. Anne and I have a running joke that I’m not allowed to leave until she does, and she’s not allowed to leave until I do,” said Binns principal Joel Grant.
Principal Grant is Anne’s 10th different principal at Binns.
“Anne is one of the hardest workers that you are ever going to find. She is somebody that can’t sit there with idle hands. She is always here doing something, whether helping me in the office here or in the classrooms throughout the school -- not just in kindergarten,” said Grant.
Anne says the students and staff at Binns Elementary have become a second family. When asked how many more years until she will retire, Binns said “Well, I don’t have any plans of going anywhere else!”