Passionate Windham Educator Gets Her Due

When you've been tasked with teaching students for about four decades, sure, you can take the stale approach and stick to what you've always taught. It's certainly easy to get enveloped in repetition and habit.

But Golden Brook School teacher Paula Renda sees no gain in that.

Like many experienced educators, she's devoted to her own education. The education of how to educate – of how to impart life experience into the town's youth and how to do it better every year.

"I'm constantly reading and learning how to teach in new ways," she said.

Take a recent lesson last month. The school curriculum told Renda to teach the number line to students. But for her it wasn't just a straight line with negative and positive integers. That would be rather dull.

The number line was the ancient Egyptians. It was 5,000 years of history, and that amazed her. It's that wonderment that feeds into her students.

"The origin of things is just fascination for me, and the curiosity of where things come from," Renda said.

Sure, cracking open a book or doing a Google search is one thing, but with Renda it goes beyond that. 

She has come a long way from the 26-year-old, long-haired woman who showed up in Windham with a bunch of ideas and strategies 34 years ago. 

In 2007, Renda laid the books aside and got her hands dirty.

For years she had been teaching her students about dinosaurs, but through the Teacher Grant Incentive Program (TGIF) in Windham, she actually flew to Utah and rubbed shoulders with paleontologists, geologists and biologists.

There she worked in the desert for about two weeks, a beautiful desert with what she called the clearest of night skies, making discoveries every day.

"(I learned that) one doesn't work alone, they work together," she said. "The understanding of that – bringing that knowledge back to the classroom was huge."

Well it didn't help that while Renda was out west, the school removed dinosaurs from the curriculum, but she said that she still slips them in to her lesson plans.

"Kids naturally love dinosaurs," she said. "After all my ducks are in order and all my essential standards are covered, my kids get a couple weeks of dinosaurs."

Renda explained that she works to make her students feel comfortable. She even made it clear that she never yells, no matter the disciplinary issue.

"(My students) know that I will never embarrass them in the classroom," Renda said.

She explained that even with her extensive training in college, where they were asked to observe and emulate lots of different teaching methods, she has fashioned her own.

It's a mix of incredible energy, discipline, humor and respect.

Yes, a lot of that personality and strategy was harvested during Renda's childhood. She had five younger sisters and was a role model from the get-go. 

She even referred to her old neighborhood in West Newbury, Mass. as a "big school," filled with children of all ages.

"I remember early on being the oldest among a certain group and being the organizer – the organizer of a kickball game, the baseball game, dodgeball – whatever," Renda said.

When she used to sit where her students do every day, she said that she could never focus, calling herself a "rascal" of a pupil.

"So I understand the student who can't pay attention," she said.

But that doesn't mean she hasn't come very far from the Paula Renda who touched down in the much smaller Windham of the late 1970's.

She has nothing but respect and admiration for her mentors at that time. She referred to Jim Flynn, who is now retired and served as principal at the time, as a guide for her in the early years.

"He helped me really get my feet on the ground and solidify lots of my skills," Renda said.

She praised Eileen Mackey, a former teacher, saying that she had never seen anyone like her since they taught together.

"She was one of the most creative, natural, dynamic I ever saw in my life," Renda said.

But while Renda will never stop praising those she has worked with in the past, it was the district that stopped and praised her in February.

After 34 years of dinosaurs, number lines, creative strategies and waves of students passing through and growing up along the way, Renda was named the Windham School District Teacher of the Year.

She was modest in accepting the honor, seeing teaching as a collaborative profession, but did so in front of a packed audience at the 2012 school deliberative session.

There, she answered a question from her good friend Linda Rattigan, who works as a first grade teacher herself.

Rattigan wanted to know how Renda has stayed so fresh in her nearly four decades on the job.

“Teaching is a career in which you can challenge yourself as much as you want," Renda said. "You never feel stagnant; you are always searching to find new methods, creative solutions, and ways of motivating your students and meeting their needs. It can be a monumental task, but it is very rewarding."