Our speaker was our very own Jamie Bente, providing his classification speech. Jamie is from Ohio and grew up in a split family. His Mother’s family were farmers, while his dad’s family were small business owners running a salvage yard and automotive store. Jamie growing up, worked with both his families and his career path vision was to take over one of the family professions.
His mother told him he would attend college, and Jamie did at Mount Union College in Ohio. Once in college, both his grandparents passed away, and the vision of working in one of the family professions was gone. Jamie graduated with an education degree focused on history.
Once out of college, Jamie followed his fiancée to Minnesota and started his teaching career as a German Teacher. Jamie recalls stories of this year and how he didn’t know German, yet he had to figure it out day by day. This theme was the pulse of Jamie’s teaching path as he continued to take on new roles and learn new skills in the field of education.
Jamie had applied to Faribault in the past and had not made the job cut. To Jamie, the rejection of the position in Faribault meant more than all the other job passes he had received. “There is something I found special here, and it hurt.” Thankfully, Faribault called him back a couple of years later and offered him the assistant principal position at the High school. Since then, Jamie has moved up the ladder and is enjoying the new challenges as District Superintendent.
Jamie and his wife have been together for 27 years and have three boys. Rogan is a freshman at SDSU, Tate is a sophomore at Lakeville south, and Brigs is in 5th grade.
