By Kenton Gehrig 42Fifty Staff Writer
Mr. Dave Jones is a dean here at Oswego High School, he became a dean here four years ago. He wasn’t always a dean however, coming from a teaching position.
I asked Mr. Jones “what were you doing before you came here?” as I was curious about how he got to the place he is in now and he told me that “I started as an English teacher at Waubonsee Valley. I taught English for seven years and coached at Waubonsee, and then I became an assistant principal, basically a dean, at Batavia High School but they don’t call them deans there they call them assistant principals.” To follow that up I asked how many years he had been in the school scene and he told me that “This is my twentieth year”
When asked about his favorite part of the job he told me that it is “working with kids. That’s why I got into teaching. I don’t enjoy hanging out detentions or suspensions and stuff like that but it’s all part of the learning process and the job.” We then started talking about this more and he said “It’s still teaching were just teaching different subjects instead of English or Spanish we’re now teaching proper behavior and conflict resolution, how to deal with different situations and get kids to realize errors they’re making so when they leave they won’t continue.”
I asked him what is a fact about him that not many people know his response was “I worked in professional baseball before I became a teacher. I worked in the main office for the Kane County Cougars for two seasons, then I went and worked in the main office for the Chicago White Sox for two seasons. This was in the early 90’s and when the players went on strike in 1994 they cut a lot of positions and my position was one of them.”
Kenton Gehrig covers news and entertainment at Oswego High School. He can be reached at 16000180@students.sd308.org. Or contact the publication directly at 42fifty@sd308.org.
Student Publication of Oswego High School, Oswego, IL
