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Mr. Jeffrey Olsen grew up in
Mt. Vernon, Illinois; consequently, he attended Mt. Vernon High School.
After high school, he went on to many colleges. When he was at the
University of Illinois he majored in English/Creative Writing; he had a
minor in history. He also took classes at Rend Lake College, Rockford
College, and Greenville College. He laughs and says that majors in
English/Creative writing, Psychology, and Philosophy are all useless
degrees. “There is no job that you can walk out of college and into with any
of those degrees.”
After college, Mr. Olsen
worked at a newspaper in Centralia, called the Sentinel. He was the sports
and obituary editor. He says that he experienced some different things at
the newspaper; he was there for September 11, which was interesting he said.
All in all, he enjoyed his work at the paper, but he says that they barely
pay better than minimum wage, and require a college education.
I asked him if he enjoyed the
paper, why teaching? Mr. Olsen comes from a family of teachers. His mother
is a teacher, his sister is a school social worker, and his great-
grandmother was a teacher. He said that he got back into teaching while he
was doing some charity work, he helped by tutoring small children that is
ultimately why he decided to teach. He first taught at Carlinville, a school
slightly bigger than Joppa.
Would he recommend teaching?
He said that you can’t say a “blanket” yes or no but he would recommend it
if you have the right disposition.
The right disposition is that
you have to be non-materialistic, you have to work well with people, be a
good multi-tasker, be tolerant because there are tons of different people in
the world and working in the school building you will me a majority of them,
and be human, admit your mistakes with a smile and be glad that you had
taught your students enough that they caught that you were wrong.
I then asked him about his
family. He has two sisters his older sister is 29, a school social worker,
and has two rabbits named Hazel and McGregor. His younger sister is 23 is
studying to be a dietitian, and has a cockatiel Clarence Birdseye. He is 27
and has a cockatiel named Doogie.
I asked him about his
interests. He enjoys reading, but he is a very picky reader, he likes modern
books but proclaims that he will only read something if it is good. He likes
the author Neil Stephenson, and enjoys books about poor people growing up in
the world. He enjoys foreign films, because he likes different cultures, and
this is an easy way to view them.
I asked him what his hopes
for Joppa High School were. He replied that everyone do well in his class
and that he will get along with everyone at the school including the
faculty. He says and I quote that he is a “Really nice person”, lets hope
that while he remains at Joppa that we can view him honestly as that.
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