“I’m originally from Sarasota, Florida. I was born and raised on a self-sufficient farm, so it’s a little bit different from how we are here. I went to college, so I spent a majority of my time in Florida up until I was 20 something, maybe 21. When I graduated from college, I didnt really know what I wanted to do, but I knew that if I stayed in Florida, I knew exactly how my life would be. I knew who I would marry, I could probably guess how many kids I would have, and I knew what my job would be. 

At the time, I was working for a magazine, and I knew I would work through the channels of that magazine. And that’s just not the future I wanted. And so one night I was hanging out with my girlfriend and we were talking about things we wanted to do. She’d mentioned she had heard of this place called Portland, and I was like yeah that sounds pretty cool we should do it. And so we were like yeah lets do it. But you know how late night conversations go sometimes, so I woke up in the morning and I called and she was like hey dude are we actually gonna do this and she said yes. 

So we both quit our jobs that day and packed up my car and then 2 weeks later we started driving across America. We stayed with some of my old college friends and relatives and we stayed in some hotels and eventually we made it to Oregon. And that’s where I ran out of money and decided that if I could get a job and an apartment in one week, then it was meant to be that I stay. And if I couldn’t, then I would go back to Florida. 

And it just so happens that I got a job and an apartment in the same week. I was a young person, so I worked in the food industry as a server and bartender. And I did that in college for the first time to pay for school. And then when I came here I started working at a publishing house. 

And as I was working there I really, really enjoyed just talking with the authors and finding out how we could get their voices out there. I wanted to be more of that part, kinda proliferating or putting voices out there that maybe we don’t get to hear, particularly students. So when I grew up a little bit , I decided I was going back to school. I went to PSU and got my masters degree and now I’m a teacher. Its my favorite thing in the world, minus my kid

I originally worked at Art Tech, which was the alternative high school for Wilsonville, and the area seemed really cool. Before I had my job interview I had never been around here before. Mostly just the Portland area, that was all I knew. And I really started to love and appreciate not just the school community but the district is incredibly supportive. The teachers are really supportive and, I mean, obviously I love you guys but it goes so much further than the kids in our class.  You can really just tell that this community loves you. The parents are always so eager to help in any way they can. I like feeling like I’m part of something bigger than myself and it feels very powerful. And you guys are pretty cool.

It’s just the care and connection in the hallways between freshmen and upperclassmen. You can see it in the ways the students engage with their teachers. You can see it in the staff, there’s just kind of this like reverberating connection that exists. And even if you go to a sports game, it’s the way the people in the stands interact, the way parents interact, and the way teachers interact. It’s like the kind of thing you thought you could only see in tv shows.