By CRISTINA JANNEY
Hays Post

Angie Kreutzer, K-3 special education teacher, teaches her students a lesson about harsh words.

She has them crumple up a piece of paper in their hands and then try to smooth it out again, saying nice things to the piece of paper. No matter how hard they try, the students can’t make the paper completely smooth again.

“Don’t add more crinkles to their paper,” Kreutzer said of how she approaches her students.

Kreutzer is in her first year as a teacher at Hays USD 489’s Westside program, which is a alternative program in which the school district offers special services for students in partnership with High Plains Mental Health.

Her compassion toward her students has earned her February’s Hays Post Teacher of the Month honor.

A parent of a 9-year-old in her class in her nomination said, “It has been refreshing to see a teacher who has a passion for helping students who  have behavior and mental heath challenges.

“She makes a huge effort to help each child learn in the best way for them, even if it’s not easy for her. Despite her challenges, she always has a smile on her face. She has been open with me about the things she feels would benefit my son in the learning environment.”

“Mrs. K also shows a lot of compassion for the families of her students. Our family recently went through something hard, and she was there with kind words and a hug. She is truly a one-of-a-kind teacher, and I wish there were more of her.”

Kreutzer, 42, is only in her fifth year as a teacher. She worked as a hair dresser, makeup artist and worked in retail. When her daughter was born, she knew she wanted more for her life and her daughter’s. She signed up for college classes right there in the hospital.

“I just wanted to do better and be better for her,” Kreutzer said.

She taught at St. Mary’s Catholic School in Ellis before moving to Westside this year. She said she has truly found what she loves to do at Westside.

“I was actually struggling with this very recently,” she said. “I am not teaching in the traditional sense. I am not up in front of a classroom explaining how to do multiplication because I have so many different kids on so many different levels. They have other factors that are maybe bigger for them than figuring out a multiplication problem. I feel my job is to teach students how to be students.

“I am not teaching in the way I always envisioned myself to be, but I am doing exactly what I think I was meant to be doing in building relationships.”

Kreutzer admitted many of the students who come to the Westside program have not had good relationships with their teachers or good experiences and it is hard from them to trust or like a new teacher.

“I would say the most important part of my job is building relationships and making connections with kiddos who don’t necessarily know how to do that. They struggle with forming bonds and relationships with people outside of their immediate circle,” she said.

Kreutzer said she builds that trust in a variety of ways.

At the beginning of the school year, she gave the students the option of ending the day with a fist bump, a high five or a hug. All of those afternoon goodbyes have now evolved to hugs.

“On Fridays I tell them, ‘I will miss you this weekend,’ and on Mondays I say, ‘I missed you this weekend. Tell me about your weekend. Tell me how you are doing.’ I try to get to know what their likes are, what their strengths are, so that when I am building a curriculum for them, it includes things they enjoy or they are familiar with.”

Kreutzer builds in time to her day for her students to talk to her or tell her stories.

“If they are having a rough day, I stick by them and let them get that all out of their system too. I think consistency is really, really important with these kids. I think showing up for them everyday is so important. I think they sense or know that I love to come to work everyday,” she said.

“I share bits of myself with them. I talk about my kids. They see my pictures, and when we talk about things, I will say that has happened to me. I let them into my life just as much as they let me into theirs. I think building that trust and being there with them and for them everyday is so important.”

Kreutzer has been through some difficult times in her life, and she said she thought that helps her relate with her students. Kreutzer grew up in Hays, but moved to Cleveland, Ohio, and worked at variety of jobs before she had her daughter and went back to college.

She got behind on her rent and was evicted. She was homeless for a time, staying with friends and even sleeping in her car.

“Life leads you in so many different places,” she said. “I do think it is for a reason. If I hadn’t made those mistakes then, I wouldn’t be the person that I am today, although they stunk at the time. But now that I am where I am and I love it, it was all worth it.”

Living in the city, she said she learned not to judge people.

“You have no idea what they have been through,” she said. “You have no idea what they are struggling with and that goes for any classroom. I treated my kids at St. Mary’s the same way. I don’t know if they got in a fight with their mom before they came to school or dad’s sick and hasn’t been to work for a month. You don’t know those things.

“If someone is having a rough day or a rough week, I don’t think its my job to come down hard on them without trying to understand why. I don’t think any kid wakes up in the morning and says, ‘I am going to go to school today and make my teacher’s day awful’ or ‘I am going to disrupt as many students as I can today. That’s my goal.’ I don’t think any kid ever does that. When it happens, there’s a reason.”

Kreutzer said maybe a student is hungry. She keeps granola bars on hand.

“Being compassionate about it … ‘I know you are having a rough day. I am sure there is a reason why. If you want to talk to me about it, great. If you don’t ,that is OK too, but let’s figure out a better way to handle this or let’s go take a break and reset and try to have a better day.'”

Kreutzer is working with young children, and sometimes they have trouble putting words to their emotions. Kreutzer tries to help the children learn about that part of themselves. She might see a child with a face strained in frustration and anger, and she might say, “I think you might be feeling angry becuase your face looks like this.”

She tries to offer options for the children to positively deal with that emotion, such as choosing to read in a quiet place or talking to a friend.

Kreutzer said she thought treating children with compassion through trauma informed education programs is not only important in a program such as Westside’s, but also in the mainstream classrooms. She said she thought trauma is much more prevalent among children than most people realize.

“I don’t think it is getting worse,” she said. “I think we are finally talking about it.”