by Karen Beavers, Lawton High School, Lawton OK
Inola, Oklahoma is the home of Ms. Jamee Combs, her husband, her family of 3 boys and the only other female in the home – Zoey, a 9-year-old black lab. Such a busy lifestyle, for an 18-year veteran teacher.
Combs returned to teaching after taking a brief time off to raise 3 boys. This is her 14th year back. She wanted to have boys because she doesn’t do girl hair. She is also not a wordsmith and likes the innovative approach to teaching.
“Students are able to learn the vocabulary, grammar, the video and put together a complete package,” Combs said about her live streaming class activities.
She was told it was easy to let the students do the video work for her digital media classes. Combs felt frustrated and thought to being inept was not fun. It was important for her to get the training to operate Longhorn TV for school.
Not only does she teach computers, accounting, digital media; she also advises the Longhorn TV, is the student council sponsor and is a class sponsor at Inola High School. She is also working on a master’s degree in school counseling and will become a Licensed Professional Counselor. This is her hardest semester because it was changed from six hours to nine hours for her practicum. She has been feeling a little bit overwhelmed.
“Yet it is not so overwhelming when you have had a good night’s sleep,” Combs said.
It is those rare down time moments though that give her satisfaction. When waiting at Dulles airport to pick up a dance team, she was notified their plane was delayed. She drove toward downtown Washington, D.C. parked her car and enjoyed the fireworks, it just happened to be the 4th of July. She enjoyed the fireworks and spent a rare moment of spare time experiencing something most people only dream about.
OSMI 2017 