Jared Alvarez: From Montana to Oregon, what’s different?

“My name is Jared Alvarez and I teach health. I’ve been teaching for 4 years, a sub for one of them. I taught for a year in Montana; I taught only freshmen, all health, and then when I moved to Oregon I was told I’d be teaching juniors and seniors, and I don’t think I’d go back to teaching freshmen because I enjoy the conversation and the maturity juniors and seniors have that freshmen don’t.

I think the big difference in Montana is the teaching differences. Oregon was impacted way more by COVID-19 than Montana. Montana was barely affected while Oregon was an online school for way longer. Oregon has loose deadlines and inconsequential rules compared to how it was in Montana, and I do see a lot of AP kids who do follow the deadlines but a lot of kids don’t. That’s something we need to revert to before COVID is expectations of students because we are lacking that.

I coach snowboarding and unified soccer teams – the epitome of my life is around teaching those sports. I combined my biggest passion of skiing and snowboarding while getting to teach kids and got to teach these kids with disabilities how to ski and snowboard which a lot of students are not able to do. There is not a unified snowboarding team in Oregon but there are recreational teams you can find that have those special programs for people with disabilities.”