Educator’s Rapport With Kids Makes Him Unique Teacher

James Holden stands in the middle of a rainbow of second graders - a soccer ball poised high above his head.

He tosses the ball into play, and the children swarm after it. But one child breaks away and throws his arms around Holden’s waist.

“Thank you, Mr. Holden,” the child cries.

Last September Holden came to Holmes Elementary in an experimental position called large school facilitator - making him a part-time administrator and a part-time teacher.

Having taught at Westview Elementary for the last nine years, the job signals that Holden is on track to one day enter the district’s administration. Already certified to be a principal, Holden could one day become District 81’s first American Indian principal.

Until then the 50-year-old is ready to pour his lifetime of experiences into Holmes students. A Choctaw-Seminole, with French and Irish blood, he intimately knows the experiences of students at Holmes, Spokane’s most racially diverse grade school.

“Often kids say, ‘Hey, are you some kind of Indian?”’ Holden said. “Then they say, ‘I’m some kind of Indian, too.’ Whatever their background, the kids here are all very similar in that they really need us.”

Holden uses his culture as an ice breaker with kids and their parents. But aside from that, he has the sort of life experiences that help him to understand the lives of his students and their families.

“He’s a real unique gentleman,” Holmes principal Brad Lundstrum said. “He sees the whole picture when it comes to kids. He understands just about everything that could be in the background of one of our students.”

Growing up on the Hoopa Reservation in Northern California, he remembers what it was like to face the kind of poverty many children living in the West Central neighborhood face. Holden even knows the lure of dropping out of school - after all, his parents had only sixth grade educations.

After high school, Holden went to work in grocery stores. Over 20 years, he worked up the ranks to be a manager. That career brought him to Spokane.

At home, he and his wife Judy were raising their family of seven children, including a set of triplets. Those children are now between 15 and 30 years old.

But by the time Holden had reached his late 30s, he decided he wanted to do something different with his life. He enrolled in Spokane Falls Community College, transferred to Gonzaga University and eventually graduated from GU with a degree in education. He received a master’s degree in education from Central Washington University.

At home life was changing, too. With his own children leaving home, Holden and his wife decided to become foster parents. The three toddlers they adopted and the two boys, who are in their guardianship, are developmentally delayed by drug abuse by the kids’ parents.

“Being the parent of developmentally delayed children has helped me see that all children are born differently,” Holden said. “My vision is to raise my children and my students in a school system and a society where they are allowed to be the best they can be.”

Holden’s life is reflected in his office. An American flag superimposed with an American Indian man hangs over his desk. Portraits of all 12 of his children sit on a shelf that dominates one wall of his office.

“I just want the students to know I’m a human being and I have children, too,” he said. “I’m not some big ogre they have to deal with when they’re in trouble.”

Westview teacher Cal Davis, who team taught with Holden last year, says there’s little danger of students missing the man in the administrator when they look at Holden.

“He has patience with kids at the same time as he sets high expectations for them,” Davis said. “He empathizes with them and that allows him to build good relationships with them.”