OP_022218

opprairie.com News
the orland park prairie | February 22, 2018 | 3
Deb Baker made legacy of helping students realize dreams
Retiring Sandburg
principal reflects on
career dedicated to
teaching, learning
Meredith Dobes
Freelance Reporter
“It may take you a while
to realize your dreams, but if
it’s your dream, go for it.”
Sandburg Principal Deb
Baker shares those words of
advice with her students all
the time.
At the end of this school
year, Baker will retire from
her more than 23-year teaching
career, 17 years of which
have been spent with Consolidated
High School District
230.
Though she always wanted
to be a teacher, Baker did not
immediately go to college for
teaching after she completed
high school, but she did not
let that stop her from later
following her dreams.
Born on the near-South
Side of Chicago in the Canaryville
neighborhood,
Baker attended St. Gabriel
Church and Elementary
School, attended two years
of high school at the all-girls
Chicago Mercy High School
and, after Mercy closed, attended
the public Jones
Commercial High School.
She was the only one of five
siblings to have attended a
public school.
“I graduated in 1973 and,
even at that time, while
feminism certainly existed,
opportunities for girls were
slow in coming,” Baker said.
“The school prepared girls to
work in offices doing marketing
and secretarial work.”
To this day, Baker still
knows shorthand and still
uses some of the skills she
learned at Jones.
Because of the school’s
focus on work skills, Baker
went directly into the workforce
upon graduation. She
worked as a legal secretary
inside of the Chicago Board
of Education and at some law
firms in the Loop.
Baker got married in 1980
and started a family in 1983.
After having two of her three
children, she made the decision
to enroll at the University
of Illinois at Chicago to
become a teacher. During her
first semester, she became
pregnant with her third child,
took one semester off and
went right back to school.
“There was no stopping
me then,” she said. “I wanted
to get my degree work done.
After I earned my undergraduate
degree, I went to get my
master’s.”
Baker was driven by a
passion for teaching others.
When she was in sixth
through eighth grades, she
was a reading tutor for firstgraders.
As a teenager, she
coordinated a summer volleyball
program for children,
teens and adults that had
roughly 360 participants and
lasted for nearly 10 years in
Canaryville.
“To me, that was a form
of teaching, making sure
kids had something to do
and were active in a positive
way,” she said.
Baker’s interest in English
and literature was solidified
when, in her sophomore
year, she read “Adventures of
Huckleberry Finn.”
“That experience was kind
of a pivotal moment in understanding
how literature can
change your way of thinking
and get you closer to an
understanding of humanity,”
she said.
Baker’s first teaching job
lasted for more than four
years at the all-boys De La
Salle Institute in Bronzeville.
Of her teaching moments
with her classes there, she
remembered a time when
her class was reading “Frankenstein.”
Baker facilitated a
discussion about biases based
on beauty, and the boys did
not want to leave class when
the bell rang, because they
were so engrossed in the conversation.
“That launched a series
of conversations after that
where the kids got it that
literature was important to
understand how to grow as a
person,” Baker said.
Following her time at De
La Salle, Baker accepted
a couple of jobs in the Chicago
Public Schools district,
teaching junior high students.
The first was at Socorro Sandoval
Elementary School,
which was brand new at the
time and overcrowded on the
first day, with 38 students in
Baker’s classroom built for
30.
Three of Baker’s students
had to sit at her desk, and
teachers were limited to making
250 copies each week. As
an English teacher, Baker often
needed more copies than
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