Substitute teacher Cory Brown will take on the role of former health teacher Lauren Coffey after she recently left WA. He is looking forward to being a fulltime teacher for WA as the health teacher and also being a Physical Education teacher. Prior to his career as a substitute he was a police officer so he will have no trouble working with students about difficult topics.

Q: What’s your name and how long have you been working at WA?

A: My name is Mr. Brown, and this is my second year here. I started my first and a half year as a substitute teacher, and now I just got on as a full-time teacher.

Q: What got you to start working as the new health teacher? 

A: Mrs. Coffey left she went down to the Cape to further her career and kind of move closer towards retirement. This [position] was what I was hoping to get in terms of a job. So when she left I was able to go through the process and take over for her but this is what I was looking for. I was looking for a full time PE and health teacher job.

Q: How are you and other health teachers working on transitioning Mrs. Coffey’s leave and your new position?

A: So me and the other health teachers were working together in terms of like, curriculum and planning, kind of going through a general outline of what we want to cover. Mrs. Coffey has been great. She left me the tables in the room, a lot of materials, and she’s made it clear that she’s a resource for me, if I needed to kind of reach out and go over things. But I think as a department we’re adjusting well and hopeful for the future.

Q:  Are you a long term teacher for replacing Mrs. Coffey or is it just for the semester?

A: So I got hired as an interim teacher. So it goes until the rest of the year and then at that point, the position will be open for next year. It’s my hope I can continue on past that.

Q: Which curriculum are you following? Are you following Mrs. Jozokos’s plan on how she teaches her class or are you following Mrs. Coffey’s curriculum?

A: Mrs. Coffey, as I mentioned, left me a lot of materials. And Mrs. Jozokos I’ve been working with a lot to kind of go through, but I’m kind of just given a bunch of materials and I can kind of pick and choose and make make my own thing out of what they’ve given me. So yeah, I’ve used a little bit of both thus far.

Q: Do you have any teachers coming in the class? A teacher that’s helping you?

A: I’m by myself, so I have no teacher assistants or anything like that in my classes.

Q: Have you had any time to learn anything about the program or learn anything about health that you need to know before starting?

A: Yeah, I had about a week and a half of like planning time. So that week during midterms, I was able to kind of coordinate a lot with Mr. Jozokos and a lot of the PE teachers and kind of go through what the curriculum will look like for the upcoming semester, so I had plenty of planning time to get ready for for my start date.

Q: How was your experience been this week since you have been the new health teacher?

A: It’s so far so good. I definitely know that this is kind of what I want to do with my life. So my classes have been awesome. My students are great. The department has been very supportive answering any questions I have and I’ve had a blast so far. I love it.

Q: How do you handle answering questions about drugs or abuse? How do you handle answering questions that you don’t know the answer to?

A: My prior career, I was a police officer before this. So I have a lot of  practical experience with things like that with drugs and abuse and tough topics like that. So I think you know, my plan is to add in a lot of like real life experience and real life examples into the curriculum. I can use my past experience as an aid to help me with teaching.