Auburn School District Board to honor Bendt, others | Briefs
Published 12:56 pm Thursday, November 21, 2013
For the Reporter
The Auburn School District Board of Directors recognizes Heidi Bendt, an Auburn Mountainview High School teacher, for her outstanding service at 7 p.m. Monday in the board room at the James P. Fugate Administration Building.
Bendt began her teaching career in Auburn 24 years ago. She started at then-Cascade Junior High School, moved to Auburn High when the district changed to the middle school model and transferred to Auburn Mountainview for its inaugural year.
She teaches ninth-grade English, 10th-grade honors English and service learning. She is the co-chair of the English department.
Community service and her Service Learning class are very important to Bendt.
“We are all inter-connected as human beings,” she said. “In helping others, we are helping ourselves.”
Bendt oversees the school’s blood drives, works with the Auburn Food Bank and Auburn firefighters on the toy distribution at Christmas, and the senior prom where she and her students partner with elderly individuals to provide a memorable evening.
She also ran a formula drive for orphaned children who were starving in Ethiopia and raised money for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society through its Pennies for Patients campaign.
Inspired by her father who taught for 37 years in the Renton School District, Bendt truly cares about her students and the community. Her philosophy for connecting with students, which was passed down to her by her father, is to “know all the students’ names the first week of school, learn one aspect about each student and then kill them with kindness.”
Bendt has been married to Christopher for almost 22 years. They live in Bonney Lake with their two boys, Kendan, 13 and Kade, 5.
Azur to be honored
The school board also recognizes J.J. Azur, an eighth-grader at Cascade Middle School (inset photo), for being an outstanding student on Monday.
Azur embodies the school’s mantra, PRIDE – perseverance, respect, integrity, discipline, excellence.
A disciplined student, Azur has set goals for himself and meets them on a regular basis. He wants to go to a four-year college and play soccer.
Math is his favorite subject and he is enrolled in geometry.
He plays soccer, participates in track and is the editor of the yearbook.
“J.J. is well deserving of this award and Cascade Middle School is honored to have J.J. attend our school,” said Principal Isaiah Johnson. “We know he will positively impact many in his future, just like he has impacted us.”
Coleman family praised
The school board also presents the Gold Star Volunteer Award on Monday to Alan and Katrina Coleman and family for their outstanding service.
The Coleman family is passionate about science and technology. When their son was in sixth grade at Rainier Middle School, he was interested in robotics. The school, however, didn’t have a robotics program. He told his parents, “We need to start a team.”
Alan and Katrina heeded their son’s desire and worked with Principal Ben Talbert to build an after-school For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST) club that launched the following year.
They developed the budget, brought in other adults as coaches and worked with the students to build the club. The first year Rainier’s team won the regional competition and placed second at the state competition.
Now, just about every Monday and Wednesday night, Alan, Katrina, Austin and Melanie Coleman, an eighth-grader, are working on robotics project.
Interest in robotics has spread at the school since the inception of the club. In the club’s first year, there were two teams with 15 students participating. Now, four years later, more than 150 students have gone through the program and Rainier now offers a robotics elective class.
This year, the Colemans are mentoring four teams with 45 students, of which one is an all-girls team of 10 strong.
