By Matthew Kollbaum
This week’s Staff Spotlight is Mr. Benjamin O’Ram. He teaches 9th grade Special Education at the MMCRU high school. This is his first year teaching at MMCRU. He grew up in Paramount, Los Angeles County, California. Paramount connects directly to another densely packed city which connects to another densely packed city which connects to Los Angeles. He says that the open yards in front of every house is not something that he is used to seeing on a normal day to day basis. In trying to find the correct job for him he attended a semester at Long Beach City College, a few semesters at Northwest Iowa Community College, an online semester through Adams State University in Colorado, several semesters at Northwestern College in Orange City, and several online semesters through Morningside College in Sioux City. He ended up majoring in K-12 Instructional Strategist II which means he can instruct students with high and lower needs.
He wanted to be a teacher because he wanted to be able to assist the students he works with to be as independent as they could possibly be. He wanted them to dream that they could travel, or do more than what people think are the simplest jobs, or finally, to dream that they could one day live in their own residences or live with the minimal necessary.
What he likes best about teaching is “learning about my students and what makes them tick. Developing a deep understanding of my students helps me tailor a curriculum that meets them where they’re at while pushing them to master new levels of difficulty. I like watching the lights go on when they’ve really learned something and seeing them expand with confidence because they’ve learned things that are immediately useful while being springboards for more complex challenges.”
Advice he would give to his students is “Enjoy having friends but don’t let them determine your identity or personality. There may not be much chance that you remain friends once you all graduate. You may find that you wasted valuable time making yourself fit into groups when you could have really developed your own identity. Knowledge of identity builds confidence. Confidence attracts.” He wishes someone would have told him to “figure out who I was, what I wanted, and how to go for it. Instead, I sought popularity and a sense of belonging in a group that cared about little more than partying and doing other things. If I would have made my own identity, personality, and academic record more of a priority, I would not have floundered through so much of life post high school.”