TEACHING CAREER IN PORTLAND PUBLIC SCHOOLS

Sam Leach began his teaching career at James John School, a Title I school in St. Johns, where he taught a combined 4th- and 5th-grade class. During his first year, he faced several challenges in managing two grade levels simultaneously. However, he discovered that one of the key factors for successfully engaging his students was involving their parents in the educational process.

Within the first two years, he began conducting home visits to students' families on his own. Meeting his families at their homes before school started proved to be a winning strategy for building trust and making the parents feel like they belonged to the school community.  

After the birth of their daughter in 2008, he found that he could no longer conduct home visits during the summer, so he created a classroom blog to communicate what was happening in the classroom and keep his families engaged. 

This classroom blog soon took on a life of its own. It turned out to be an excellent vehicle for engaging not only the parents but also the local community.

Soon, mayoral candidates and local educational leaders were showing up to do classroom “celebrity” read-alouds.  He leveraged the blog to solicit donations for the classroom.

His students’ artwork began appearing frequently at the local Starbucks, just a block away, and at the local bookstores.  

In August 2011, before the school year began, Mr. Leach decided to host a back-to-school potluck for his incoming third graders in the park two blocks away.  

Since he knew many of the students he served were food-insecure, he went out into the community. He secured donations from local grocery stores and restaurants.  Most of the students and their families in the incoming class showed up.  All of this was documented on his classroom blog.

Throughout his time as a classroom teacher, he would conduct summer home visits or blog about the day. How much of the work was done outside of the teacher's contract day? This did not go unnoticed and became a source of concern for building union leadership as Mr. Leach continued to work outside of the teacher’s contract. 

Parents began approaching Mr. Leach and suggesting that he become a principal. In the summer of 2011, he enrolled in his Initial administrator’s license program.  He completed the program in 2012. 

During the 2011-2012 school year, Mr. Leach had a student teacher.  The yearlong administrators program was very intense, with weekend classes and several requirements that had Mr. Leach filling in for his principal for parts of the school day.  Mr. Leach’s student teacher needed much more support than he was given.  In the spring, during his solo teaching, Mr. Leach received several complaints from parents about the student teacher.  These concerns were brought to the school’s principal, but it was decided to let the student teacher finish the year.   The week after completing his solo teaching assignment, the teacher left without notice to the school or Mr. Leach.   

 Mr. Leach was an experienced teacher who had successfully guided two student teachers and several field-experience students from local universities.  However, this last student teacher proved to be a complete failure.  

The following year, Mr. Leach decided to teach kindergarten. He hoped that engaging kindergarten parents early on would set a pattern of parent engagement.  The new parents of his kindergarten class loved seeing what was happening in the classroom on the blog. They also love seeing which kindergarten student will be the Student of the Week!

Several times a week, different parents came in to volunteer to read aloud to the class.  

The next full year, Mr. Leach took the job across town at Kelly Elementary School as a management specialist.  This was a TOSA (teacher on special assignment) position.  Due to his years of classroom teaching experience, along with a history of building successful relationships with students and parents alike, he has recently earned his initial administrator's license from Portland State and has been licensed by the TSPC. Able to come and form successful relationships with students, parents, and staff alike. Even though it was a long drive across town every day from St. John's, he knew that classroom teachers needed support, and he thrived in the Student Management Specialist role.

After two years at Kelly Elementary, this student management job was eliminated due to funding cuts.

The following school year, in 2016, Mr. Leach took a job at Lent Elementary as the student management specialist, now called a school climate coach. Even though that role had been staffed by different people the year before, Mr. Leach was able to come in and help bring stability to the classrooms by working one-on-one with students, teaching them Zones of Regulation (helping them regulate), providing breaks, and using daily check-in/check-out for targeted behaviors. Mr. Leach worked closely with teachers and helped implement  Safe & Civil Schools classroom management programs. 

Throughout his entire tenure at Lent, Mr. Leach continued consistent (often daily) compassionate communication with parents.