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Cumberland Times-News, Cumberland, Maryland, United States of America

County's top teacher puts in plenty of extra work

JAMES RADA
Times-News Staff Writer

Photo Credit: Diane Fair/Times-News Teacher of the Year Ken Baxter, environmental science and physics teacher at Beall Junior/Senior High School, stands next to one of his several classroom fish tanks that he uses for teaching purposes.

FROSTBURG -- Walking into Ken Baxter's classroom, it's easy to see why he deserved the Allegany County Teacher of the Year award. One side of the science classroom at Beall High is dominated by a huge tank from the Appalachian Laboratory on the Frostburg State University campus and is dedicated to raising fish.

Several computers in the room include one that is dedicated to retrieving satellite information from a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration satellite. Posters, maps and a snake skin line the walls. Models and flying dinosaurs hang from the ceiling. It's a scientist's playroom.

"A lot of people will say, 'Ken can do all of this because look at what he's got.' They don't realize what Ken had to do to get all of this," Baxter explained.

Baxter puts in a lot of extra work to get things his classroom budget can't afford. One of the computers came from a NASA workshop Baxter attended. Another came from a grant he wrote and administered. The fish-farm tank is part of a project his students are doing to determine how to grow the fish in the shortest amount of time for the highest profitability.

"You've got to have things to get the kids out of the classroom and into the environment, thinking and collecting data," said Baxter.

He's been teaching for 23 years and more than 13 of them have been at Beall. He's taught all of the sciences and even English and journalism. Now, he is teaching environmental science, physics and physics II.

"I've got an eclectic teaching style. It changes all of the time. I look at the kids and decide how to respond. Kids have to respond or you're just spinning your wheels," explained Baxter.

Senior Emily Neral appreciates that teaching style, "What's exceptional about him is that he cares about what students think and feel. He takes the time to listen to them."

During class, he encourages students to extrapolate answers from the information they already know. He uses examples and personal anecdotes to pull the students into his lesson. Most of all, he keeps them interested.

Senior Adam DeVore said, "He can talk about topics, but he relates them to things you actually do. It helps out a lot with the harder classes."

Neral agreed, "He presents the material in a way you can understand, but he makes it fun to learn, too."

"You do what you can to change kids' paths and make them realize that education is the answer to changing their lives," explained Baxter.

He's not worried about the increase of students in his classes with the addition of students from Mount Savage next year. He sees it as an opportunity to fill out his upper-level classes like physics II and make them more efficient while having only a small effect on his general classes.

"If I go from 22 to 26 students in a physics class, it's no big deal, just a few more papers to grade. Moving from six to 15 students in a physics II class is a more effective use of teaching resources," said Baxter.

To win the Teacher of the Year award for Allegany County, Baxter first had to win the award for Beall. His portfolio was then placed in competition with the portfolios of other Teachers of the Year from the different schools in the county. He was then interviewed and chosen from among six teachers. This is the second year in a row that the Allegany County Teacher of the Year has come from Beall.