Teachers bring expertise into the classroom
Published 10:10 am Saturday, April 26, 2008
KINGSTON — Bob Geballe uses natural human curiosity to keep his students interested in life, the universe, and everything. Geballe, a 13-year teacher at Spectrum Community School, teaches astronomy, computer programming, applied mathematics and a host of other topics he isn’t endorsed to teach, but life’s experience makes his teaching invaluable.
While his certification is in career and technical education, Geballe is one of the handful of teachers who have stepped up in the district to fill vacant teaching spots. Teaching is his third career path — and one that combines his previous professional experiences.
In his first professional incarnation, he was in the field of neuroscience research. Then he turned to television production.
As his students mapped star clusters, he said it’s not difficult to keep them interested in the topic at hand.
“You can’t walk outside at night, look up and not be filled with questions. The trick is to take that sense of mystery and curiosity and apply it to some scientific ideas,” Geballe said.
Chris Willits, director of NKSD’s Human Resources, estimates only a couple of class periods a day are taught by teachers not endorsed in the topic they’re teaching. But this handful of teachers makes a huge impact for the students. State law allows districts to teach outside their endorsed topics on a case-by-case basis to meet scheduling needs.
“It makes a difference when you’ve all the sudden got more students who want to take classes in a subject area than you have teachers to teach,” Willits said. “And we’ve got teachers who have expertise and experience in areas they are not endorsed to teach.”
These teaching assignments are meant to be short-term.
“In all these cases, if we perceive these are going to be long-term assignments, we’ll start to work with the teachers to get an endorsement in that area,” he said. Some teachers also hold endorsements in other states for certain topics, but not in Washington.
That’s the case with Dan Novick, Kingston High School’s athletic director, who surprisingly enough, doesn’t hold a Washington state certification to teach physical education or health. He holds an endorsement to teach social studies in Washington and has multiple endorsements including social studies, physical education and health in Texas.
Novick said he believes that an endorsement doesn’t define a teacher.
“I think when it comes to out of endorsement areas, you have to look at a teacher’s abilities. A good teacher can teach anything,” he said.
Novick also believes teachers should be flexible and be able to step in where they are needed.
“I’m not one of those people who carries my contract in my back pocket and says, ‘That’s all I’ll teach,’” he said.
