Being a teacher involves lots of unseen parts both inside and outside of school. For example, although many of Mrs. Baer’s students witness her in-class kindness daily, what she does behind the scenes is not as widely recognized.

Having experienced three different schools so far during her 20 years of teaching, she loves the job, but she also acknowledges its moments of extreme stress. In fact, when Baer was teaching in Minneapolis, she “Had a kid set a trash can on fire and throw a desk.” Nonetheless, she makes being a teacher look easy because when she walks in, even on a tough day, her students describe her as kind and outgoing.

Despite Baer being known by many for her work as a special education teacher, she has also made an impact by being a speech coach and embarking on a two week trip to Cambodia.

Although she has only been a speech coach for two years so far, Baer has judged for six and helped various students with different speech categories, including poetry, drama, prose, and humor.

For example, Charlie Olson, a senior who worked closely with her for two years, said: “She is very kind, she is very supportive of my work,” and “She gives me suggestions on what I need to do, and she just supports me in what she thinks is good and what she thinks I should change.” He credits Baer for helping him become more successful and even win at tournaments.

Also coached by Baer, Avery Schneider, a freshman, said: “Without her, I wouldn’t be at the point I am now,” and “She is also a very kind person.”

Baer has clearly helped students, and many of them have expressed that she went above and beyond for them. Addressing her motivation, Baer said, “I think the joy that overall is of teaching and working with students makes me excited to come every day.”

In addition to being an immense help at Prior Lake High School, Baer also recently helped out during a two week trip to Cambodia with other teachers experienced in assisting kids with special needs. Also, her group was actually led by someone from Cambodia named Sam Ouk, The Prior Lake Savage Area district’s Director of Equity. 

The big goal was to help integrate special education students into Cambodian schools and really just teach the schools how to set students with special needs up to thrive and grow. The Prior Lake Rotary, in support of special education, wrote the grant that made the trip possible. However, Baer believes that because Scott County has the second largest group of Cambodian refugees in Minnesota, they “Chose Cambodia so they could send teachers there to really understand the culture and the history so we can better understand how to help our students and their families.”

 For that reason, the first half of the Cambodia trip revolved around the teachers working to understand Cambodian culture and history, including what happened during the genocide that led to so many refugees. To learn, Baer said: “We went to Angkor Wat and went to temples to hear all about the history, which was horrific to hear about but also helped us understand how difficult it was for people to be there and have to leave.”

Baer also mentioned that while working to understand the Cambodian peoples’ backgrounds, she “Saw a lot of different socioeconomic status areas.” For example, she found that because her group met Ouk’s wealthy family members who own export businesses for rice, she was able to get a glimpse into wealthy Cambodians’ lives. However, she also saw how the wealthy’s lives differed from those living in the middle class that resided in huts. In fact, the group got to see the Cambodian middle class’s living conditions up close when they went to a village where Baer recalled: “We took ox carts driven by water buffalo into a little village, and we helped sew the siding for a house with bamboo and palm leaves.”

After that first week, Baer believed that she and her group were much better able to understand the Cambodians’ struggles. So, from there, they went to a village to work in a private school and a public school where they did things like help lesson plan, teach the uses of a sensory room, and correct some of the incorrect English that was being taught.

 The Cambodian teachers were thrilled to receive the help, but Baer acknowledged: “We learned a lot from them as well. It wasn’t just us helping them, they helped us.” Along with that, the kids there saw going to school as a privilege and even demonstrated their enthusiasm by bowing as Baer and the rest of the group walked past the classrooms, which she felt was a nice change from being in Prior Lake High School where education seems to sometimes be taken for granted.

During the trip, Baer found it interesting that “Kids had to take a test every spring, and if you couldn’t pass the test you couldn’t go to the next grade level.” She even saw an example of that when she was teaching a second grade classroom: “There was someone who was probably 15, and he was in there as well because he had never passed the test.” That was clearly impactful for Baer, and reflecting on the situation she said: “I wish I could have done more…if we could test him, we could determine his needs and then be able to help give more resources.”

Since the Cambodian schools largely do not test for things like learning disabilities or ADHD, and they are more focused on visible disabilities like extreme autism or down syndrome, many kids with the harder to detect disabilities end up quitting school and attempting to get a job. Because of that, Baer hopes to “Go back in a couple of years and hopefully bring a team to do testing.”

Although witnessing the effects of the lack of testing was unfortunate, Baer overall “loved working in the schools,” and she felt it was a good “Combination of work and education.”

Evidently, Baer has been an amazing help to many people in a variety of different ways, from coaching speech to working in Cambodia. Although she said: “You know the only other thing I have dreamed about is opening a bakery and making pastries and chocolates,” Prior Lake High School is lucky she chose to work here!