Black Butte School has two new teachers

Black Butte School is starting the new year with two new teachers.

John Kostecka is the school's new upper grade teacher, and DeeDee Cashwell is the lower grade instructor. The pair, who make up the school's main teaching staff, along with new interim superintendent Craig Nikolai, were on the job for the first time on Monday, January 14, as students returned to school after a long winter vacation.

Although there will be some crossover in the classes they teach, Cashwell will mainly work with the nine students enrolled in grades K-4, while Kostecka will spend most of his time with the eight students in grades 5-8.

"We do a little bit of mixture.... For some subjects I will be teaching all (the students)," Cashwell said. The same is true for Kostecka. "In social studies, I'm going to have K-8. In language arts I'll have 4-8. It just depends," he said.

Cashwell brings six years of teaching experience to the Black Butte School District. For more than five of those years, she worked as an elementary instructor in San Bernardino, California, where she mainly taught fourth and fifth grades. She then took a three-year sabbatical to be a stay-at-home mom. She rejoined the teaching force in September of last year working for the Redmond School District as an educational assistant in the Independent Life Skills program. In Redmond, Cashwell worked with students in grades K-3.

Kostecka comes to Black Butte School from the Battle Ground, Washington area.

"I've been in education for 32 years. I've done basically everything in K-12," he said.

He has also worked as an administrator and an educational consultant. Most recently, Kostecka worked as a middle school librarian.

"This year they moved me to the library because the librarian left. I was starting to build the library," he said.

Cashwell, a native Oregonian, moved to Redmond last April where she resides with her husband and children. For her, the daily commute to Camp Sherman is no big deal.

"I got quite used to going 20 miles taking me an hour in Southern California. You actually make progress here. Commuting does not bother me. It actually gives me time to compose my thoughts, and I also like to listen to audio books on tape," she said.

Kostecka and his wife and two sons have for some time contemplated a move to Central Oregon and plan to make their home in the Sisters area.

"We have vacationed in this area a lot...," he said. When the job opening became available in Camp Sherman, Kosteka decided to explore the opportunity. "My employer was very supportive...," he added.

Both Cashwell and Kostecka were attracted to Black Butte School because of its small size.

"I was drawn to the school by the smallness of it, the rural school, where you get the ability to teach multiple grade levels within the classroom," Cashwell said.

Cashwell has had hands-on experience teaching several grades in one classroom before coming to Camp Sherman. While in California she taught a non-public school multi-grade summer school class of special education children in grades 7-12.

She told The Nugget that a low student-teacher ratio is very beneficial to the student.

"The fact that students are given more time to be able to work with the teacher in a more one-on-one setting is very positive," she said. "Even though there are multiple grade levels, you still get a chance to teach everything that they need to be taught, and the students seem to progress at a very rapid pace, so many students exceed grade level standards."

Both Cashwell and Kostecka hold Masters Degrees in Education. Cashwell's is from Alliant International University in San Diego, California, and Kostecka's is from Whitworth College in Spokane, Washingtion. Kostecka additionally took post-graduate classes and completed work necessary for his administrative license at Lewis and Clark College in Portland.