Greetings parents! I’m Ms. Baldwin.

This year I am teaching four periods of English 3 and one period of English Language Arts (ELA) Lab. I have been teaching for 26 years and 21 of those years I have taught in the Cottonwood community. I started teaching 7th grade English at West Cottonwood Jr. High in 1994. It’s quite possible some of you parents may have been in my class! I moved away to the Bay Area for a couple of years where I taught junior high history for a year at a private school called Christian Community School in Fremont, CA, and then taught high school English at Liberty High School in Brentwood, CA for three years. My family moved back to Cottonwood in 2003 and that is the year I started teaching English at West Valley High School. I have spent a handful of years split between West Valley and Anderson or New Tech, but West Valley has always been my “home.”

One of my favorite aspects of teaching is helping students better understand what they are reading, whether it be their own, chosen outside reading book or a challenging work from Shakespeare. I am thrilled when I see the understanding click in their eyes when they’ve connected to something we have read together in class. I also enjoy helping them hone and perfect their writing skills along the way, and I celebrate a little when I see them walk away from my classroom just a little more informed and a little more confident than they were on the first day they walked into my classroom.

Outside of the classroom I like to garden, read (of course), and travel when I get the chance. I also love to attend (and sometimes even organize) themed events such as Renaissance faires, comic cons or post-apocalypse themed events.