By: Richard Gallegos

SAN JOSE CALIF— In his 17th year here at Silver Creek, Jason James is one of the Physical Education teachers here.

James has been teaching at Silver Creek High School for 16 years, with this year being his seventeenth. He started his career as a physical education teacher here in 2008 and continues to pursue his career to this day. James was born and raised in Arizona, but he lived in Germany living there for six years until James’s dad got stationed in Washington, bringing him back to the United States.  James considered his school life to be fun, incorporating himself in sports for all of his three years of school. His grades in school were “okay” but they improved as he went on to Central Washington University. James’s original passion was to play professional basketball or football but it unfortunately didn’t work out; so he decided to pursue his job as a physical education teacher which was his backup plan.

When asked what strategies he uses to keep students engaged and motivated throughout the year, he said, “I try to incorporate fun and try to make it personal for them for a connection.” Motivating students to be the best they can can be a hard challenge, sometimes students strive to do their best and others just need extra motivation that can sometimes carry them to be even better. To help him overcome these obstacles he tries to incorporate fun by making jokes with students and building relationships with students. Students can sometimes feel unmotivated so to try and help to solve this and motivate students he tries to incorporate challenging students to do the best they can.

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 Photo Credit: Richard Gallegos

This is a photo of Mr. James working on his laptop in his office which is located in the boy’s locker room.