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LEARNING EXPERIENCE: TEACHER'S FIRST YEAR, STEPHANIE THOMSON, Columbian staff writer 
February 14, 1999; 


One of his colleagues mistook him for a ninth-grader. A parent declared him "too young to teach." And some days, Jamey Wolverton feels as if he is learning more than his students. "It's challenging," Wolverton said. "Things come up every day that are new."

Still, the first-year math teacher at Pacific Junior High has no regrets in his career choice as he learns to juggle all that comes with the job.  Writing lesson plans and scheduling conferences. Returning phone calls to parents and sending home weekly reports. Handling discipline problems and keeping up with new state learning goals.
"You have to do seven things at once," Wolverton said, "and that can be hard."
One Thursday in January, Wolverton stood before his fifth-period class with his arm raised.
Thirty jabbering seventh-graders quieted, and Wolverton started them working on a pre-algebra problem.
He moved about, helping students, intercepting passed notes and reminding kids to stay on task.
Later, he throws out a question about equations.

"Can anyone tell me what a variable is?"

A boy pipes up, "A letter representing an unknown number."

Using a scale, Wolverton demonstrates balance. When he asks what needs to be added or subtracted to make the sides equal, nearly all hands go in the air.  Wolverton graduated in 1990 from La Center High School, where he was a pianist in the jazz band, catcher on the baseball team and forward for the Wildcats' basketball team.

Just as he motivates his students to understand the finer points of pre-algebra, Wolverton motivated his teammates; he picked up a few Most Inspirational awards at end-of-the-season banquets.

A lifelong Clark County resident, Wolverton's parents have operated Salishan Vineyards in La Center since 1971.
His mother, Joan, aside from being Clark County's only winemaker, serves on the Fort Vancouver Regional Library Board of Trustees.
His father, Linc, serves on the La Center School Board.  Joan Wolverton said her father was a school superintendent.
She grew up listening to stories about the problems faced by educators trying to engage students and please parents while worrying about budgets, shrinking salaries and discipline.  Her first reaction to her son's decision to become a teacher was "Oh, no. Do you really want to do this, knowing everything it involves?"  Then, "my real thought, and his father's too, is this is a wonderful thing. I can't think of any single being in my life who influenced me more than my teachers."

First house
Wolverton didn't grow up picturing himself as a teacher, but has known for a while he wanted to work with young people.
As a psychology major at Whitman College in Walla Walla, he tutored and served as a mentor for elementary school students.

He contemplated a job as a counselor, then decided teaching would allow him to shape the learning experiences of a greater number of kids.  He received his master's degree in education from Lewis & Clark College in Portland in 1998.

As a first-year teacher with a master's degree, Wolverton's annual salary in the Evergreen School District is $27,516. Still, he was able to buy his first house, a three-bedroom home in Fisher's Landing.  He plans to marry Erica Schader, an elementary school teacher, on Aug. 7.

After the demonstration on balance, the bell rings and Wolverton keeps behind two students who had problems keeping quiet.
He talks with each one separately, then sighs after they have left.  He said fifth period is his toughest class, but accepts it as a challenge and said he "loves the energy" of seventh-graders.

Besides, handing out discipline is a small price to pay, he said, for the joy of having a student grasp a new concept or solve a difficult problem. "It's easy to focus on the negatives," Wolverton said, "but there are little nuggets of gold everywhere."

JAMEY WOLVERTON
AGE: 26
NEIGHBORHOOD: Fisher's Landing
FAMILY: Parents Linc and Joan Wolverton of La Center; brother Thomas, 23; fiance, Erica Schader, a Fircrest Elementary School teacher
FIRST-YEAR SALARY: $27,516
QUOTE: "I had this feeling, 'OK, that was too easy. It's going to get harder from here.'" on his first day teaching seventh grade at Pacific Junior High School

    Excerpts from Double-teaming, ISOLDE RAFTERY Columbian staff writer   
    November 25, 2007; Everyone has a teacher who broke through. Someone who made learning - no matter the subject - a joy. Teachers at Fort Vancouver High School believe they all can reach students. They want to expunge the idea that solid teaching comes only from a handful of charismatic instructors who put on a good show.

    In four years, Fort teachers have eased into reform mode. They were tired of hearing the excuses - that their students were too poor, that the students' parents were too uninvolved. "We're pulling away from the 'Oh, you poor kids' way of thinking," said teaching coach Courtney Gallagher-Yinger. "We have no more excuses. We want to provide excellent instruction to better their lives." Fort, McLoughlin Middle School and Roosevelt Elementary School all tested Powerful Teaching and Learning, a program to sharpen teaching. This fall, Principal Jeff Snell decided to implement it schoolwide.

    He said some teachers may think this is yet another fad.  "It used to be, 'If you didn't get it, too bad,' " Snell said. "But we have to think about how we're moving students forward."  At the core of Fort's reform is teacher-to-teacher coaching.
    Snell has applied symbolism to the effort, calling it "the climb." Every teacher is "roped up" to a teacher from another department; the pairs observe each other's classes to later discuss their teaching. Snell encourages teachers to examine how their peers ask questions: Is the teacher asking for facts, or for higher-level thought?

    A school with challenges
    Fort has 57 flags hanging in the school's foyer - one flag for every nationality represented at the school. Nearly 20 percent of the student body is learning English, a fact made evident on a walk down the hallway. On a recent morning, four teenage couples cuddled in four different languages.

    It's also a high-poverty high school. More than 60 percent of the student body qualifies for free- or reduced-price lunch.  Fort, in a sense, represents what's happening statewide. Enrollment has leveled off, but more students come from poverty and fewer speak English.  As student demographics have changed, so too have federal and state standards.  The No Child Left Behind Act of 2002 demands higher test scores at the same time that student poverty is rising.

    Testing 'engagement'
    The wall between Ben Cornett's classroom and math teacher Jamey Wolverton's classroom folds open. Wolverton and Cornett are each other's unofficial coaches and talk every day about what worked in class.  Last Monday, Cornett followed his usual routine: witty banter with Wolverton - a gag that perks up students - a short lesson, a worksheet, then working in small groups.

    Cornett and Wolverton were teaching how to calculate the slope of a line, but many students were slipping.  When called on, one girl noted there was gum on the next seat. Another read an Anne Rice novel.

    Cornett and Wolverton had talked earlier about discipline issues. Students were walking in late, and they didn't seem to trust each other or the teachers. For Cornett, a comfortable classroom means students will return, which means they might learn something and, ultimately, pass the WASL.

    "There's that old teaching cliché that you're not supposed to smile until after Thanksgiving, but we don't do it that way," Cornett said.

    They broke for a team-building exercise, a simple game involving two rows of students. All students, save two at the end, close their eyes. The teacher flips a quarter, and if it lands heads, the students squeeze their neighbor's hand. The first line to finish the series of hand squeezes wins.

    But after four rounds, the game failed. The boys didn't want to touch other boys, and the girls kept giggling.  Later, Cornett and Wolverton chewed over the day.

    "That told us that, wow, we have to do more of that team-focused stuff," Cornett said. "They don't trust us, and they worry they're going to look dumb if they don't have the answer."