Three new teachers join Sisters schools this year

Josh White and Mary Thomas teach at Sisters High School. photo by Jim Cornelius Three teachers are new to the Sisters school system this year. In some ways, they are as diverse as their students.

Betsy Leighty-Johnson, 51, has been hired as a special education teacher at the elementary school. She holds a bachelor's degree from Eastern Oregon University and master's degrees in teaching from Willamette University and in special education from Lewis and Clark.

For the five years before taking her current job she was a special education teacher at Bend High School.

She has an extensive background in both education and the Oregon National Guard. As she explains it, "I followed in both my parents' footsteps." A native of Woodburn, she graduated from Woodburn High School, where for a number of years her mother was the vice-principal. Her dad was a career National Guard officer.

Leighty served 24 years in the Oregon National Guard and retired as a lieutenant colonel in 1999. Among other things, she was director of the Youth Challenge program run by the National Guard and later went to work for the Oregon Youth Authority and ran that agency's first juvenile boot camp before it was moved to La Grande. At one time she was operations officer of the State Military Academy.

In 1995, Leighty and her husband, Vern Johnson, a heavy equipment mechanic for the Oregon Department of Transportation, decided that he should take an assignment at Santiam Junction "so we could move to Sisters." That was also when the Guard had asked Leighty to take over the Youth Challenge program in Bend. "So for a period of time he was commuting one way and I was commuting the other."

One particular goal of the move worked out well: Both of their children graduated from Sisters High School, son Casey in 1998 and daughter Molly in 2000. Both are now college students.

Betsy Leighty-Johnson. photo by Jim Cornelius

Vern, meanwhile, has retired early from ODOT but has a new temporary job with the National Guard in Redmond. "They've deployed so many out of there they've taken almost every mechanic...so it keeps him (Vern) off the streets," Leighty said.

Mary Thomas, 35, has a one-year appointment filling a temporary language arts position at the high school. The position will re-open next spring. She plans to interview for the job and hopes to keep it.

Her primary teaching job before this was in the Centennial Learning Center, an alternative school run by Centennial School District near Portland. Earlier she spent several years teaching a variety of classes for the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry.

After three years at Centennial, Thomas came to Bend "to get my master's at Eastern Oregon" (the Bend-based Master of Arts in Teaching program offered by Eastern Oregon University.) She liked Central Oregon and "decided to stay," working as a substitute teacher last year at Three Rivers Elementary School in Bend.

Thomas's bachelor's degree is in English, from the University of Oregon. "My passion is English," she explains, "but my overall passion is teaching." All of her students are ninth graders, which she says she likes. "They're entertaining. Never a dull moment."

Thomas is a native of Portland and while she says she loves Portland she was drawn to Central Oregon for its outdoor opportunities. Her own outdoor specialty is Ultimate Frisbee, which she plays competitively and has played "on and off" since her days at the University of Oregon.

She finds Sisters High School "incredible...I feel really lucky to be a part of the school and I really enjoy being part of a small district. You can ask for something and you know you are being listened to."

Josh White, 24, is a 1998 graduate of Mountain View High School and a 2002 graduate of Whitman College in Washington state. He holds a bachelor's degree in physics and math and, like Thomas, is teaching all ninth graders this year. Right now he's teaching math but in the spring he'll shift to science. He has a one-year appointment at Sisters High School.

"I wouldn't have thought it (teaching freshman math) would be something I would enjoy," he says, "but I find it really rewarding. The kids are fantastic."

Is being so young a disadvantage in dealing with high school-age students? "Certainly in some respects," White said. "But for the most part I'm able to use it to my advantage. It's easier for me to relate to the kids. Early on it was maybe a little more difficult to put myself in the role of an authority figure, but we're well past that now."

White was born in upstate New York. He moved with his mother to Bend in the winter of l989-90 and went to Bend public schools from then on. He was determined to find a teaching job somewhere in Central Oregon partly because his own extracurricular specialty is whitewater kayaking.

"I'm not exactly a weekend warrior," he explained. "I'm kind of obsessed with it (kayaking). It's what I do. It's kind of why I chose to stay here. It's the best place around (for whitewater kayaking), but don't tell anyone."

White has replaced a teacher who is taking a one-year leave of absence.