User:Janscher

Jon has spent many years as an educator in varying capacities. His journey as an educator began with his own transformative journey in high school. With the help of several mentors and a challenge course program at Cherry Creek High School, Jon became a leader among his peers. After having had his own revelations, he decided to become a challenge course facilitator to expose others to the same experiences he was fortunate enough to stumble into. Before his transformation, Jon didn't have a lot of friends and didn't have a strong connection to his school. By the time he left high school, he had been a Science Lab Teacher's Assistant, president of Chess and Computer Club, a leader on the challenge course and with the Outdoor Club, and participated in many AP classes and independent studies.

In his junior year, Jon read “Two Tramps in Mudtime” by Robert Frost as part of a class assignment. In it, Frost talks about uniting “your avocation and your vocation.” That poem triggered him to rethink what it was he really wanted to do in life, and eventually inspired the path that led him to seek first a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy and then a Master of Arts in Teaching at the University of Puget Sound.

At Puget Sound, Jon became equally involved as a leader in many groups: the Residence Student Association, Casino Night, Leadership is Action Council, Puget Sound Outdoors, and Passages. Jon also took a plethora of different classes. Taking no minor, Jon took extra classes in many subjects, including: geology, math, Spanish, English, communications, biology, and psychology. He was a Teacher's Assistant for classes in geology, backpacking, and rock climbing. Jon drank up learning everywhere he went, but his passion was with philosophy and creative writing. In fact, despite never having taken a minor in English, Jon took 10 English classes, 5 of which were specific to creative writing. Jon loved exploring ideas through philosophy and expressing them through his writing.

Despite the fact that he enjoyed living in the metaphysical world of thought and theory, Jon knew that somewhere, for all that thinking to mean something, he had to put it to use. So it happened that Jon found himself applying for the teaching program. This was the perfect opportunity to take his ideas and put them into action by helping students gain exposure to the same opportunities for growth that had led him to where he was.

Leaving the University of Puget Sound, armed with a degree in the theoretical and a degree in the practical, Jon entered the world of teaching in the Bethel School District. He dived into the new challenges and intricacies of managing a classroom and educating students. But he missed the transformational experiences he had seen and experienced working on the challenge course. So, he went back out in search of ways to incorporate that into his classroom. Through that journey, he found himself working with Northwest Teambuilding as a facilitator and later as a program manager. Here he united the soft skills of leadership, communication, self-esteem, trust, and support with the hard skills of his English curriculum.

After teaching two years in the classroom, Jon found his way into distance learning with Bethel Online Academy. Suddenly, his experience as a youth with computers and technology were married with his expertise in delivering quality instruction. Here, he began to juggle many different projects and tasks, learning skills even faster than he had before. He became a master of many trades, teaching himself HTML and CSS as he designed the webpage and documents to help standardize a quickly growing school's systems. Quickly, he began to realize that he had a unique ability to bridge the gap between educators and developers.