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Diane Crim's Clayton Middle School students are invited to call her at home, most anytime."I've only (received) one heavy breathing call in nine years," said Crim. "What's a kid to do if he doesn't understand the math? . . . It only takes two minutes, and it solves so many of my problems."
Such dedication nudged Crim into the spotlight as teacher of the year in Salt Lake City School District.
"I'm really glad this happened for Diane. She's worked hard for it and grown herself into it. And it's fine that the rest of us have recognized it," said colleague Mari Do-manski ("I want to grow up and be her," Crim said), who teaches social studies and language arts.
While Crim shies away from the accolade, any hope of keeping it secret was dashed when she tried to sneak in late to a faculty meeting and was applauded by co-workers. And then there was the plaque from the district and surprise party from her family.
"All this has been very disorienting to me," Crim said. "But I think it's an opportunity to say teachers do some really amazing stuff."
Crim pursued a teaching career after her Highland High School calculus teacher put her in charge of class for a day. She earned her college degree in three years, only to meet with a disastrous student teaching experience.
But thanks to encouragement from Bill Crim, the man who would become her husband, Crim gave the classroom another shot and found her niche.
"In her early teaching career, she worked hard at remaining a student," Domanski said. "I think the best of us in any profession realize (we're) full-time students in everything."
Crim teams with other teachers to help ease students' transition from elementary to middle school and to assist in comprehension through application. Next fall, she teams with science. The same group of children have the same two teamed teachers all year.
"They're developing so much socially now. We need to put the focus on their discovery of who they are," said Crim, the adoptive mother of two foster children. "We (in middle school) don't want to be a place where (students) live two years before high school, but a place where they make a transition to adulthood."
Crim doesn't hesitate to dish out compliments to her students, whether through phoning parents to give praise or telling students they have "an amazing brain."
She also wants to make sure the gray matter learns to think for itself.
"I'm very, very good at explaining things. But my philosophy is not to be the explainer," Crim said. "I believe students should be the explainers, the teachers . . . then the information is theirs."
She offers the same logic problem every year, which kids take home, then present their answer to the class, often going so far as to use props. The class votes on which they believe is correct. (She doesn't give them the answer.)
"I want them to trust their own thinking," she said.
And the kids do. So much that they chase her down the hall explaining a web of reasoning they insist is correct.
"Middle school is the place for me . . . it's free entertainment every day," Crim said. "You can make a difference every day."