INSIDE

No more apples for Mrs. Rita

By Meg Olson

Mrs. Rita to hundreds of local young people, Rita Worth will not be welcoming a new crop of kindergarteners to Point Roberts Primary School next fall. With her June retirement Worth is celebrating 40 years as an educator, 15 of them in Point Roberts.

“My first Point Roberts class is graduating from college,” she said. “I taught my daughter in my first year and my granddaughter last year. I’ve spanned a generation here.”

Graduating from San Francisco State University in 1967 with a degree in sociology and a teaching certificate, Worth first taught in Orange County. “I taught in a gifted program – all the kids had higher IQs than I did,” she laughed.

In the early 1980s Worth moved to Orcas Island where she taught in a Waldorf school for ten years. “It was my most meaningful decade as far as recognizing teaching young children as a calling,” she said. “You should be the gardener and they should be the growing life. You can either force bulbs to bloom in the winter or you can plant them in the fall and let them bloom in the spring – those are the ones that bloom year after year.”

When that school closed Worth went back to the public school system, and came to Point Roberts. She started at the local school when the current building was still under construction and she taught 21 children from kindergarten through second grade in the front room of the community center. The seniors used the back rooms. “Carl Julius would come by and wave and then you’d hear the pool balls clicking for awhile and then he’d come by and wave again, “bye kids!”” she reminisced.

For her first three and last three years at the school Worth has been the only teacher. “Having the three levels is harder than having two but it’s always worked, the multi-level class,” she said. “At a young age I think it’s great. You want the child to feel that sense of home, of family.”
The school system she joined 15 years ago is not the same as the one she is leaving, Worth said. “They didn’t have a lot of prescribed expensive curriculums and testing,” she said. “It was so creative I just felt right at home.” Using watercoloring and storytelling to lead children through a lesson about insect life-cycles, she said, lets them use their natural creativity to learn, and makes teaching more fun and rewarding.

“I’ll miss the creative part of teaching but not the tests, not the reports.”
Worth is now living in Ladner but is closely involved with many aspects of the local community, and plans to stay that way. “I’ll have to come back and walk on the beach, be a part of the community,” she said. She will continue to participate in the church choir and the Wackie Walkers, and is looking forward to attending the senior center lunches.
On June 1 at Baker Field all of Worth’s students are invited to come and celebrate her career and the school she has helped to build. From 4 to 8 p.m. an alumni reunion and retirement party are planned, including food, music and a talent show.