Carla Arnold shows her husband, David, something on her smartphone on June 13, 2023. 

LA GRANDE — Central Elementary School music teacher Carla Arnold had just been seriously injured but she didn’t have time to feel the pain.

It was December 2020. Arnold, following a fall, had just fractured the tibia of her right leg while leading eight students during a practice session for the La Grande Fiddle Club.

The educator was more concerned about her students than her condition.

“My leg hurt but I really did not think about it because I was so worried about the children,” she said.

Ten minutes remained in the practice session and Arnold was the only adult at Central. Fortunately calm heads prevailed and Arnold was able to get a student to call her husband, David, who quickly came and arranged to get his wife to Grande Ronde Hospital.

Arnold, who has taught in the La Grande School District since 1994 and is retiring July 1, was diagnosed with a spiral fracture, a break that occurs when a twisting force is applied. The fracture line resembled a corkscrew or spiral staircase.

Arnold was told that had she tried to stand on her broken leg the pain would have been amplified dramatically.

“It would have been excruciating,” she said.

Arnold, wearing a cast, was back teaching at Central three weeks later.

But now, after a teaching career that stretched over 30 years in the La Grande School District, Arnold is calling it quits: At the end of the school year, she officially retired from Central.

The students in Arnold’s music classes leapt at the chance to help their teacher as she dealt with the cumbersome challenge of teaching with a broken leg in a cast.

Of the many students who assisted none had a bigger heart than Knox Siders, then a fifth-grader. Siders waited at Central’s main outdoor entrance each morning when Arnold arrived. Each day, Siders had the heavy electric power chair his teacher needed, one he had ridden from inside Central where it had been charging overnight.

Siders then made sure Arnold got to her classroom. The student’s volunteer efforts continued each afternoon when he made sure his teacher safely rode her power chair to where her husband was waiting to pick her up. Siders then took the power chair back inside where it could be charged.

“It was amazing,” she said. “He was there everyday to make sure I was OK.”

Arnold made sure Siders, who played the upright bass, was recognized for his uncommon compassion, rewarding him each morning with a 15-minute lesson for playing his instrument.

A road less traveled

The collective embrace Arnold received from Siders and all of her students after fracturing her leg is one of the reasons she knows that she made the right decision to change her career in the late 1980s.

Arnold, who grew up in Salem, worked at a bank in Newberg for 10 years after earning a degree in business administration from George Fox University. She had a good job but did not feel passionate about it.

“I was bored,” she said.

Then her husband was hired at George Fox to direct its counseling department. He soon learned that the spouses of faculty at the university were not charged tuition for classes they took at George Fox.

“That was exciting news,” Arnold said.

She soon enrolled at George Fox again, this time to earn an education degree.

After getting her second degree, they later moved to Meacham, where David wanted to live so they could be closer to his parents. Carla got a big break when she had a chance to fill in as a substitute grade school music teacher in Pendleton for three months.

This gave her the experience she needed to land a part-time position as music teacher at La Grande School District’s Riviera and Willow elementary schools. She taught at Riviera, now no longer a school, and Willow from 1994 to 1997. She left the two schools in 1998 to become Central’s full-time music teacher.

Popular organizations she started in La Grande during her tenure included the La Grande Fiddle Club, an after-school program run by the Grande Ronde Symphony Orchestra in conjunction with the La Grande School District. The Fiddle Club, open to all students everywhere in third through sixth grade, has been operating for at least 10 years and has given numerous public performances in the process.

“I love community music making,” she said. “It is music making which integrates into the community.”

The music educator said one of the best things about her career has been the chance it has provided to know children over the course of six years from kindergarten through fifth grade.

“Watching and getting to know kids and later their kids is wonderful,” she said.

Musical zest

Mike Frasier, who taught choir at La Grande High School from 1973 to 2002, credits Arnold with making music come alive for children.

“She is able to make it fun and exciting for the kids,” he said, adding that the interest Arnold shows in her students pays dividends. “When you show kids that you care they will rise to your expectations.”

Frasier also said Arnold is among those who deserve more credit than they receive for the success of the music programs La Grande High School and La Grande Middle School.

“She’s overlooked. She has helped them be successful by laying a foundation at the elementary level,” said Frasier, who led La Grande High School to three state choir championships.

Arnold, who received a Crystal Apple award for educational excellence recently, plans to remain busy in retirement. She will be giving clinics through the Grande Ronde Symphony and will lead children during regular performances at assisted living homes for seniors.

Arnold also hopes to start a program for seniors living at the assisted care centers to become mentors for the children she will be bringing in to sing.

Kindergarten roots

Arnold will be succeeded at Central by Avalon Bloodgood, who Arnold first taught as a kindergarten student. She said Central’s music program will be in good hands.

Advice Arnold is giving Bloodgood includes this gem:

“I told her, ‘Be good to those kindergarteners because someday one of them may replace you,’” she said.