A Career in Education Beyond the Conventional
I have loved my career in education. Some years being better than others, of course. But a turning point, was 22 years ago in 2003, when I was Building Learning Specialist at Walker High School, Puyallup’s alternative education option. I had recently earned my Masters degree in Education, with it’s focus on “At- Risk Populations”, and that was a very purposeful choice because my plan from the beginning was to help the kids who had fallen in the cracks and slouched with their dusty clothes just out of my reach. I intended to always support students who needed a different venue, a different approach than mainstream education offered. It became eminently clear during my 2 years as the Building Learning Specialist that ‘At-Risk students and their teachers were two sides of the same coin. Teachers must be allowed to keep their individuality and their creativity as professionals if we hope there will be a real connection between the teachers and students, and that connection, especially with kids who attended an alternative school, is vital. Without it, I believe reaching at risk students is a unlikely.
The state stopped funding the position of building learning specialist and I spent next year the running the school’s very small ‘contract based’ program called The Omega Program, where students were required to attend one day per week, and they worked on the curriculum through lots and lots of packets. Those students were allowed only if they had extreme anxiety or other physical or social problems. These were students who would have dropped out if it weren’t for The Omega Program. They were connecting to me, and they were succeeding, and the program was growing to a level of discomfort.
Fast forward through the next decade of working in mainstream high school in the same district. Was it rewarding, being crowded in a classroom with up to 35 teenagers who were filled with thoughts of their adventures and energy for almost anything but English? Yes, until physically and intellectually, I needed my space.
Luck seemed to follow me, and in 2013 I landed at Puyallup Online Academy as the “Online Specialist”. It was fascinating to be in a computer lab, over seeing online learning while also being the person responsible for each student’s transcripts. It was up to me as the teacher then to get as many students their credits as possible. Then it was graded 9-12 and 9 seemed too young to handle online learning.
Leap frogging over the next decade, it has all been online for me. Now the online curriculum reaches k through 12 and while the rest of the world was shocked by the pandemic, I was ready and having been actively persuading students to learn and grow and get that credit through the online venue called Edgenuity, for years.