Time to be a full-time cowboy

WORLAND – After 27 years teaching industrial arts at the Worland Middle School, Dean Barent has decided that it is time to retire to pursue a different set of goals.

"I've spent 27 years in the school district. This year they were offering an incentive program and I have a horse business called Cherry Creek Quarter Horses. So it will give me more time to pursue my goals in the horse business. I show in the reined cow horse events and rope a little bit, so it's going to give me the opportunity to spend more time being a full-time cowboy," Barent said.

In industrial arts Barent taught his students basic shop and technical skills. He stated that his class gave the students a chance to learn how to use basic tools and create something with their hands and learn if that type of skill is something that they would like to pursue once they get into high school and beyond. "Basically, my job is to prepare them for high school the electives that they have at the high school. When they are in middle school it's kind of an exploratory thing so some kids really love it and want to pursue more of it and other kids tend to gravitate towards other things. At the middle school we want to make sure that all the kids get to experience those sort of things and find out their likes and dislikes as far as elective courses," Barent said.

"I think a lot of times we forget that not every kid is going to be a computer whiz, some people are going to work with their hands and make a darn good living, building houses and those type of things. It kind of gives them their first experience at the sixth-, seventh- and eighth-grade level of being able to use their hands to produce products and use different tools," Barent added.

Worland has a rich tradition of state champions and state championship teams and Barent is thrilled to have been able to contribute to that tradition while coaching wrestling for 23 years. "It's been a great coaching career also because I was able to have four-time state champions and three-time state champions and won three team titles and was three time coach of the year," Barent said. He added that most of his adult life has revolved around teaching, wrestling and the National Guard. He has served for 25 years and was deployed to Iraq in 2004 for 14 months.

While Barent will miss the students and the comradery of the staff at the middle school, there are a couple things that he won't miss. "I can tell you what I am not going to miss; I'm not going to miss the bell ringing. When your life operates on bells for 27 years, you're always in a rush to beat the bell so I'm not going to miss that at all. People are always rushing around, you know teachers operate on a bell and I'm not going to miss operating on a bell at all and I'm probably not going to miss riding on a yellow bus anymore. I've put 8 gazillion miles on a yellow bus," Barent said.

"Worland is a great place to live and raise your family and we have a great educational system here and just a really fine community with a lot of great people," Barent said.