An A a day keeps the New Mexico Public Education Department away, at least in the nightmarish way that prompts most district administrators out of a sound sleep at night.
On Sept. 25 Education Secretary designate Christopher Ruszkowski visited Lindrith Area Heritage School in Lindrith off of State Road 537, to celebrate the school’s A grade on this year’s school report card.
The School is an oddity compared to many in Rio Arriba County, in the fact that is spearheaded by only two teachers, husband and wife team Rachel and Ken Fuchs, both classroom veterans of over 20 years.
The School, originally part of Jemez Mountain Public School District, has been a charter for 13 years.
“They (The District) couldn’t afford this one and the one in Coyote, so they consolidated all of their elementaries to their main campus in Gallina,” she said. “So the community opened this charter school.”
Tight staff
The School’s community is tight knit and boasts a student body of kindergarten through eighth grades composed of 19 students and a staff of five, including the Fuchses.
The A Team consists of retired teaching veteran of over 30 years Sandra Welppert, who serves as the School’s full-time teaching assistant, retired special education teacher, diagnostician and administrator of over 25 years, serving as part-time principal, Rebecca Gibson and custodian and master chef Ed Cook.
Gibson, who even in retirement maintains contracted diagnostician work, has been involved in the area her entire career and believes that it is the size and special nature of the school that make it a success.
“I was director at Cuba for a number of years,” she said. “My first teaching job was at Lindrith before it became a charter. I was principal when they opened the school as a charter, but had to go between Cuba and Lindrith. We decided to try to get a principal that could be there more often. When I retired, I came back.”
Gibson said financially things are a battle, but the school’s dedicated staff and community keeps the blood flowing and the A’s coming.
“Our size allows, because we are so small, for Mr. and Mrs. Fuchs to provide interventions and services to kids quickly,” she said. “So, it is really our community as a whole that make us a success.”
The Fuchses split the students into two classrooms, with Rachel Fuchs working with the kindergarten through third-graders, and Ken Fuchs taking on fourth through eighth grade. While to many “traditional” districts the comingeling of so many grade levels may seem like a logistical nightmare and a Little House on the Prairie meme, the duo finds that it is one of many aspects of their success.
“I consider it to be my dream job,” Rachel Fuchs said. “I really do because I have K through three in my room this year, and Ken has four through eight, and we are able to build a family. The eighth-graders have recess with kinder, and they will help them. It is no easy feat to make all of the grades work, but we make it work.”
She said the school has some students with troubled pasts, but as they get older and become leaders for the younger children, the behavior shifts, because they are part of a family and are role models.
Freedom to teach
Outside of the unique community nature of their old school “one room” school house, the Fuchs have found a great deal of freedom in developing a curriculum and daily structure that allows them to be successful.
The kindergarten through third grade students enjoy a very individualized schedule that mimics a station to station approach, but really focuses on the engagement of younger students with shorter attention spans and high-energy levels.
The fourth- through eighth-graders receive more of a structured approach where they alternate between reading and math groups with Ken Fuchs, independent study where they work on assignments at their desks or time where they are on the computer.
With an oversimplification of the daily structure of the School, the Fuchs believe their secret sauce really comes down to time and their small size.
“If you think of what our secret sauce is, I think there is (sic) a couple things,” Ken Fuchs said. “I think our principal is just super about working with us and listening to our needs and what we need to do with the kids. I think since we (He and his wife) are together as teachers, we literally communicate everyday about what every child needs.”
He said although children are separated into grades, he and his wife can focus more on their level.
“We have a handful of kids that actually switch back and forth between our two classrooms, because that is just the level that they are at,” Ken Fuchs said. “They get what they need, and if they need to catch up, we can focus on them.”
While the A is impressive, it’s more exciting because they raised the school’s score from a C, in 2017, to an A in 2018, a strong improvement in a short time.
“If you look at the last eight years, we had three Cs, and when Ken and I took over, we had three Bs,” Rachel Fuchs said. “Last year we had a C. We really went down in PARCC (Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers), and we found that the issue was writing. So, we started Eureka Math, which has a really strong writing component for math and we started an hour of explicit writing instruction every day for grades three through eight.”
Freedom, time, a strong community, small class sizes and the utilization of technology and student-led socialization are all parts of a much larger and simple strategy: Family.
When the Fuchses are asked by colleagues what it is like to work in a one-room schoolhouse, their answer is simple.
“We have two rooms.”