Eric Brown
In the first grade, I kept a grade book to track the intellectual progress of my stuffed animals. Teddy Ruxbin had a knack for elocution, and G.I. Joe excelled in physical education. Not surprisingly, I pursued a career in education after graduating from the University of California, Los Angeles.
In 2000, I accepted a substitute teaching position in the Burbank Unified School District. Within a month, I was teaching third grade full time for an instructor who had been injured in a handball accident. (True story, I swear.) My students and I had a rocky start—they missed their regular teacher, and I didn’t really know what I was doing. Fortunately, I soon learned that teaching math with M&Ms and peppering story time with the occasional silly voice were fast ways to win a third-grader’s heart. I grew to love the challenge of helping students learn, and decided to seek full-time employment for the next school year.
After brief stints in San Francisco and the Conejo Valley, I landed in the Los Angeles Unified School District, where I taught for six years. In that time, I wrote curriculum for my English department’s writing electives, piloted intervention programs for at-risk students, and served as lead teacher for Sun Valley High School’s Arts, Media and Entertainment Academy. In 2007, I accepted an instructional coaching position at John H. Francis Polytechnic High School, which challenged me to mentor new teachers, lead action research projects, and design the school’s literacy and professional development programs. I also acted as liaison between the district and the school site, training staff in district-adopted instructional strategies and increasing acceptance of district initiatives. For more information about my professional experience, please see my résumé.
As an instructional coach, I became acutely aware of the role effective communication plays in implementing and sustaining education reform efforts, especially in a professional culture susceptible to political whims and conflicting ideals. For this reason, I applied to San Diego State University’s master’s program in mass communication and media studies, with the goal of learning how to establish mutually beneficial relationships between an organization and its internal and external publics.
In my time at SDSU, I learned that professional educators and communicators share many values. Success in both fields depends on careful preparation, attention to detail, and above all, establishing positive relationships with the people you serve. Both fields aspire for a noble goal: to promote positive, lasting change in the communities we serve. In my view, collaborative learning, community partnerships and ongoing professional growth are the best tools we have to reach this goal.
“Capacity” is not a destination. It is a continuous process of reflection and improvement.
Moving Past Capacity 