From the left, teachers Chris Elander, Barbara Cordes, and Carol Benthien, are a multi generational family working at Buttons and Bows.
September 5, 2008 More than 40 years ago Barbara Cordes, now 88, came home to her husband, Karl, crying. She had been teaching for two years at a local pre-school and was frustrated with how the school wasn’t preparing the students enough for an academic career. “I wanted something more educational,” she said. Her husband told her she should start her own school in their barn on South Hill. They transformed it into a one room schoolhouse and Buttons and Bows pre-school began. Forty years later that’s where the school remains. “You can still smell the hay in the loft,” said Chris Elander, Cordes’ daughter and one of eight teachers at the school. Buttons and Bows has come a long way since it started. There are now several classrooms in the transformed barn and nearly 10,000 students have graduated from the pre-school in its four decades of operation. The school offers classes for pre-schoolers two to three days a week. They focus on getting children ready for an academic life from socialization to early childhood literacy. “We are not a daycare,” Elander said. “Kindergarten teachers tell me they can pick my kids out,” Cordes said. Routine is a big tool in learning, Elander said. “They’re like little sponges,” she said. “They just soak it up.” And the desire to provide education has become more than a business — it’s become a family calling. About a dozen of Cordes’ children, grandchildren and in-laws are teachers. Many of them began teaching at the school after retiring and others teach in the Puyallup School District. “I’m full of school teachers,” Cordes said. “It kind of runs in the family.” It’s all about a desire to teach children, Elander said. “We call her (Cordes) ‘The Pied Piper,” she said. “She started it.” It’s appropriate because one of the biggest joys for Cordes is getting students to follow her lead and fall head-over-heels for learning. Even at 88 years old she stays current on all the new teaching techniques, Elander said. Learning needs to be structured, but it needs to be fun too, Cordes said. A good way to do that is getting a child excited about singing a song, she said. It’s a confidence builder and many of her students can blow people away with how they take ownership of a song, Cordes said. “I’m a firm believer in children having self-confidence,” she said. The school hosts several performances, usually around Christmas or other holidays. When a father sees their daughter singing they often have a tough time holding back a tear, Cordes said. “This is where we win the fathers over,” said Carol Benthien, Cordes’ daughter and a teacher at the school. Getting the parents on board for their children’s education is the key to a successful student, Cordes said. “We can give them (the students) the education,” Elander said. “But it still starts in the home.” “The parents are such good workers,” Benthien said. They really are.” Many of them work so hard, because they remember their own experience at the school, she said. There are generations of families who have walked through the doors at Buttons and Bows. “They choose to have their children here,” Elander said. There’s a familiarity to the school. It still looks like a big red barn from the outside and in Cordes’ front yard is a massive Willow tree. But even the familiar or comfortable won’t keep a tear or two from the face of a nervous pre-schooler on their first day of school, Cordes said. For the parents it can be even worse. “It’s harder on the mothers than the kids,” Cordes said. “And some of the dads are just as bad,” Benthien said. But the tears dry and before they know it they are off and running. “It’s amazing how quickly they adapt,” Elander said. And what began with tears four decades ago often ends with tears at the end of the school year, but this time they are happy ones. “It is very much that way,” Elander said. The students at Buttons and Bows find a home away from home in a schoolhouse barn where a family has found a calling to teach. ------------------------------------------------------------ Originally published in the Puyallup Herald September 5, 2008 Buttons and Bows > Phone: 253-845-2511 > Address: 8622 112th St. E. in Puyallup
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Button's & Bow's Preschool