By Sara Ballenger

She began as a substitute teacher, but Sondra Swinmurn soon found herself a permanent teaching position and what seems to be a permanent place in the hearts of students at Montecito School in Los Altos.

After 16 years of teaching, Swinmurn is retiring at the end of the month. “I have just enjoyed myself,” said the preschool teacher. “My husband is retired and we are going to live near our granddaughter.”

Swinmurn has become known for her creative and often innovative teaching techniques.

“The art projects are very original and most of time using completely recycled items,” said Russell Mirov, whose son, Alexander, was in Swinmurn’s pre-kindergarten class. “One of his favorite games he learned from Mrs. Swinmurn, the bottle cap game, is made from 10-12 plastic bottle caps with a different sticker on top. It’s a clever game where they have to define words.”

Aside from projects, Swinmurn makes a habit of encouraging her students on a more personal level.

“Her daily selection of ‘Special Person of the Day’ helped build everyone’s self-esteem,” Mirov said. “The special person had special tasks to do and they were even lucky enough to have ’special homework.’ With only 12 students, the daily rotation gave everyone many special days.”

Swinmurn strives to make each student comfortable in her classroom.

“She truly gets to know each of her students and is able to appreciate and accept their differences,” said parent Kim Burke. “She makes every student comfortable with who he or she is.”

Swinmurn helps her students overcome language barriers.

“We came from Taiwan and my son is very slow in developing his language skills,” said Kuantai Chen. “She understands the feeling and difficulty of being a non-native language speaker and she is very patient and tireless with my son.”

With her years of teaching experience, Swinmurn has also helped recognize learning disabilities in students.

“She helped us identify Sensory Integration Dysfunction in our son,” said Pam Rasmussen of her son, Thomas. “She was clear in her observations and compassionate in assessment. Thomas wasn’t labeled or treated as a problem child, and we were able to identify a learning disability that could have gone undiagnosed for years.”

Swinmurn recognizes the individuality of each of her students. “It’s important to accept children for who they are and not who you think they should be,” she said. “Children are individuals and can be great teachers.” Swinmurn said she will miss all that she has learned from the children over the years.

“I will miss being a big kid and seeing the world from the children’s perspective,” she said. “As adults, sometimes we know too much. Kids are much more open and look at things differently. There is plenty to be learned from being around children.”

Though Swinmurn will be relocating to Sacramento, she doesn’t plan on straying too far.

“I am going to continue to do resource work at a distance,” she said. “I will be coming back to check in. I won’t be severing my ties completely, but I will miss it.” It seems Montecito will miss Mrs. Swinmurn too.