Dr. Randy Baker, an English teacher at Putnam City North High School, is being honored by the Oklahoma Foundation for Excellence as one of the state’s top educators. Baker will receive the foundation’s Medal for Excellence in Secondary Teaching at the organization’s 24th annual Academic Awards Banquet on May 22 at the Renaissance Tulsa Hotel and Convention Center.
Baker and five other medal of excellence winners will receive a $5,000 cash award and a glass “Roots and Wings” sculpture created by Oklahoma artist Ron Roberts.
In more than 35 years as an educator, Baker’s teaching philosophy has remained the same: to develop strong teacher-student relationships; to establish high expectations through rigorous curriculum and to help students understand the relevance of what they learn to their own lives.
Through writing assignments and discussion, Baker makes a concerted effort to get to know the needs, hopes and dreams of each student in his class and to create an environment where it is safe to take risks, to make mistakes and to grow.
While Baker's students may learn the classics, his approach to teaching is very contemporary. Students use pod casts, PowerPoint presentations, YouTube videos and Facebook to help make literature and composition exciting.
Baker invites students' parents to participate in classroom discussions, to write their own words of love and advice to their children during a unit on "Hamlet" or to help create Greek masks during a study of "Oedipus Rex."
Baker's Advanced Placement literature class continues to grow in popularity.
"Dr. Baker's passion for his vocation is quiet and assured, though his passion for his subject brims over into shouted quotations from 'Beowulf' in its original Anglo-Saxon, mask-making workshops, Shakespearean dramatizations and candle-lit poetry readings," said former student Jillian Hanon.
Baker, who holds National Board Certification and a Ph.D. in English education, has received numerous honors, including district Teacher of the Year. He was recognized as one of the "Top 100 Innovative Teachers in the United States" by "Business Weekly."
This is the second year in a row that a Putnam City educator has been honored with a Medal for Excellence. Barbara Gabel, Putnam City’s Fine Arts curriculum specialist, received the foundation’s Medal for Excellence in Elementary/Secondary Administration a year ago.
Hear a podcast of Baker’s students from their study of Hamlet. In this podcast, students reads letters of advice from their own parents.
http://podcast.putnamcityschools.org/Site/Podcasts/Entries/2007/11/1_Study_of_Shakespeare_Brings_Advice_and_Love_from_Parents.html