South Jordan

In June 1989, I decided that I needed a change. I transferred to a new school, South Jordan Middle School, in South Jordan, Utah. While there, I had the opportunity to incorporate servers into our school and tie the schools computers together. I signed on the help PowerSchool beta test a new piece of software that would help our student, teachers, and parents keep track of grades and work. It was really fun because we helped PowerSchool find out what "teachers" needed in a gradebook program.

I continued teaching History, Reading, and Computer Science as well as maintains the schools computers. Again, I was swamped. Teachers and administrators were constantly interrupting my classes because they needed help. It came to a head one day when Mrs. Richards (Principal) had a secretary call me on the PA and tell me I was needed in another classroom, immediately to solve a computer problem. I went nextdoor and arranged for the teacher to keep an eye on my classroom and went to help. In the meantime, Mrs. Richards came to my classroom. When she found I wasn't there, she got upset. She went back to her office and made an announcement for me to come to her office. When I got there she started to chew me out for leaving my classroom when I had students in it. When I reminded her that SHE had asked me to leave the room to help another teacher, she got embarrassed and said, "I think we might have a problem!" The next semester, my teaching workload was cut in 1/2 and I had 1/2 day to help with the school's technology integration.