Teacher Profile Series: Benge's Bob Moore

Six years ago, teacher Bob Moore thought he worked in a "small" elementary school. The Ritzville native worked at Mona Elementary School in Mona, Utah.

Mona Elementary School serves around 250 students, so "small" may seem like an appropriate description to most. But then Moore moved back home to Ritzville and took a job at the Benge School. The Benge School finished the 2018-19 school year with 12 students.

Moore has been a teacher for 17 years.

Moore says he had other plans when he attended college.

"First I wanted to be a game biologist," Moore said. "Then I wanted to be a veterinarian. Then I didn't want to go to college for the rest of my life, so I thought, 'I'll go into teaching, I've always liked that.'"

Not that teaching hasn't always been a passion for Moore.

"I like kids," Moore said. "You can't teach unless you like kids."

Moore studied at the University of Idaho before transferring to Brigham Young University in Utah. He then begin teaching at Mona Elementary in 2002.

"Mona was more like (in size) Ritzville. I had 33 students my last year. I normally had between 27 and 30." Moore said. "I was an elementary teacher so I taught all subjects."

In Benge, Moore is one of only two teachers. He teaches math, science and social studies while Martha Heidenreich teaches language skills.

While both schools that he taught at are small, he says the the size gap between them causes several differences.

"There's more differences than you'd think," Moore said. "The biggest difference is in a larger classroom, you have a difficult time meeting with each student as much as they need, as much as is required for them to become proficient in whatever skill you want them to be proficient in.

"It's much easier at Benge to do that because I have a handful of students at any given time, and I do have the opportunity to meet with them and work with them one-on-one," he continued. "So they get more teacher time."

Moore says this is very important.

"If you want [students] to succeed at any critical skill, at school or away from school, they need time with a mentor," Moore said.

Because there are so few students, Moore will often have students from several different grades in his classroom at the same time. He said that generally, grades K-3 will be in one classroom, and grades 4-6 will be in the other. He said teaching kindergartners and third graders at the same time can be tricky.

"The kindergartners might be online on the computers doing some onlining gaming or practice," Moore said. "While they're doing that, you're working with the other kids. When you're done with them, they go on the computers ... You have to be halfway organized to do a good job at it."

Moore said he made the move from Mona Elementary to Benge School so he could return home to Ritzville.

"I'm a long timer from Ritzville," Moore said. "I intended at some point in my career to make it back to where I grew up."