Teachers on the Path Less Travelled
Education, especially Special Education (SPED), has always been a prominent theme throughout my life. My mother has worked in the Los Altos School District for the last decade as both a teacher’s aide and a SPED teacher for multiple schools within the district. I have been in several different SPED classes throughout my education and I am lucky enough to have multiple people in my life that reinforced the idea that high school isn’t the be-all, end-all path to adulthood; I can struggle throughout school and it won’t dictate my future. However, for many kids, they are completely immersed in the idea that if you don’t graduate from high school having taken all AP classes and passed with straight A’s, you can forget about college or having a decent future. In this vain, kids with a disability, physical or mental, can seem condemned to life of failure.
I chose to write about teachers who struggled throughout their educational histories for several different reasons: to show that you can struggle in school and still be successful; to challenge the idea that all teachers have had the same straight A path through school; and that there are people out there fighting to improve our flawed educational system without discounting it.
As a design student, I got to create a book for my documentary. This project challenged me to act as a full design team by being in charge of interviews, writing a research paper on my subject, designing the layout of the book in Adobe InDesign, drawing design elements in Adobe Illustrator, and photographing and editing in Adobe Photoshop.
Photogallery
Interviewee Bios
Sarah Gerlinger is a New Teacher Mentor for the Los Altos School District. She has worked in schools around the Bay Area for thirteen years, ten of which she taught in the classroom.
Katie Hurst is the second New Teacher Mentor for the Los Altos School District. She has taught in the classroom for ten years.
Natalie Axley is a fourth grade teacher at Gardner Bullis Elementary in Los Altos, CA. She has worked in the district for three years and taught outdoor education for two years.
