Always on Her Mind

That’s Dedication!

An Alaska teacher, mauled by a brown bear while walking her puppies late one Sunday afternoon, had a single thought before surgery: Please call my principal and tell him to get a substitute teacher for the next day, she told a hospital nurse.

Colleen Sinnott, a special education teacher at Tustumena Elementary School in Kasilof, was walking with her husband along a rural trail when the bear charged and slammed Sinnott to the ground. She suffered a deep gash along her head and shoulder injuries.

The fact that she was thinking of her students, and not herself, on her way into the operating room didn’t surprise her school’s principal, John Halverson. “She’s very professional and responsible,” Halverson told the Anchorage Daily News. “She hasn’t missed five days of work in the five years I’ve been here.”

Photo: James Gritz