Pasco High has undergone constant changes, with administration and staff coming and going. One staff member who’s seen it all is Ms. Baker, who has worked at Pasco High School for the last thirty years.

Ms. Baker is the pottery and ceramics teacher here at PHS. She teaches beginner and intermediate pottery, including the hand building techniques slab, pinch, and coil.

“I tend to stay with a good thing,” says Ms. Baker on Pasco being her first and only teaching job.

Ms. Baker started her teaching career at Pasco High and plans to finish it here as well. When asked about when she started working here, she said this:

“I wanted to teach in a small mountain community in Northern California where I lived before…  but everyone else wanted to work there too!”

With her California State teaching credentials, Ms. Baker applied to a number of schools in Washington State.

“I put in an application for Pasco because they had an art position,” says Ms. Baker. “Mr. Reynolds called back, interviewed me over the phone, and I got the job.”

Mr. Reynolds was the principal at the time.

Before she was a teacher, Ms. Baker switched her college major and transferred universities multiple times. She graduated from Chico State University and started working fast-food jobs in California. The difference in environment was one of the first changes she faced when moving to Pasco, Washington.

“Ok, so they grow agriculture here, I know agriculture,” says Ms. Baker. “I looked out my window expecting to see miles of agriculture and it was like a desert. Which was different than anything I had ever experienced.”

Despite being the pottery teacher now, when Ms. Baker was initially hired she had no idea what kind of art she would be teaching.

“Nobody even clarified what I was teaching, I just knew I was teaching art,” Ms. Baker says. “I just taught drawing and pottery.”

Part of Ms. Baker’s teaching includes trying new things and finding new ways to teach the same principals of art every year. One year, students created artwork inspired by a culture they’re interested in.

“Kids didn’t seem to do that very well,” she says. “So I thought, well maybe that’s just limiting their creativity.”

For this year’s intermediate class, students have done sgraffito and had the opportunity to learn how to use the pottery wheel.

“This year has been more fun than the preceding five.”

When asked about the future of art at Pasco, Ms. Baker said this:

“That they introduced standards to try and make it so high schools couldn’t eliminate art. That it was legitimate… and eventually they made art a requirement.

“But I don’t believe those standards have anything to do with getting into college.”

Ms. Baker also commented on the way school shootings have affected the sense of safety.

“School shootings have changed how I feel in the school,” she says. “I use to think it would never happen here and now I’m not so sure. It was never something that crossed my mind when I started working here.”

Nearing the end of her career at PHS, Ms. Baker says she is “looking forward to contributing to my community in different ways. I’ll probably sub for a while, I think I might volunteer at a senior center.”

With full classrooms each year, Ms. Baker has taught pottery to hundreds of students. Students are able to hand build pottery pieces, glaze them, and ultimately keep their artwork.

Students interested in taking pottery with Ms. Baker should email or meet with their counselor in Student Services.