Sitting in his new office, Grant High School Vice Principal Jonathan Harrison multitasks with ease, simultaneously discussing his life as an educator and typing away at his computer to manage his new position’s considerable workload.
With 12 years of experience in education, Harrison is no stranger to academic environments. His career in Special Education has given him a profoundly unique perspective, which he aims to utilize during his time here at Grant.
Growing up in Texas, Harrison’s high school life was “a little bit unique.” Born in Houston, he grew up in Waco before moving north to Denton. As the second-oldest of eight children, he spent a lot of time assisting with childcare. Growing up in such a big family, he says, “Some of my siblings needed a lot of help and support. It was a really interesting time. Sometimes it was a hard time.”
Looking after his siblings taught Harrison the values of caring for others and responsibility, which he has carried with him his whole life. “I was blessed to be a part of a family that, as all families do, had our issues, but there was a core of love and respect for everyone. And there was a sense of responsibility that was instilled in me to care for those around me whenever I could,” he says.
Harrison got his first job in his early teens, and at age 17, he moved out for college to live on his own. As an undergraduate student, he worked at a variety of places, from a concrete company to a bookstore, with a stint at a pizza shop sprinkled in. In college, he was studying for a degree in psychology and a minor in philosophy but took a different turn just before graduating and entering a Ph.D. program for counseling psychology.
“I decided to look around and see what careers might be more rewarding and be aligned with my philosophical beliefs,” Harrison says. He ended up shadowing a Special Education principal named Dr. Anne Hughes, who offered him a job as a paraprofessional. “I fell in love with the community of educators (and) I fell in love with the mission to help students who are often overlooked by our systems.”
Harrison went to graduate school, switching degrees and earning a master’s in educational psychology with an emphasis on behavioral science. He obtained a teaching degree and behavior specialist certification in addition to his master’s degree.
After his job as a paraprofessional, he was a Special Education teacher in a life skills classroom, similar to the programs offered at Grant. Harrison says, at the same time, he was teaching in a General Educational Development program for kids who were catching up on school or needed to graduate early. He was also teaching in a Social Emotional Learning classroom. “That was my first teaching job and I was split across those three programs equally, by thirds,” Harrison says. “After that, I moved to Portland.”
The move was in part motivated by his love for nature. Having previewed Oregon’s outdoors on a road trip around the state, Harrison found himself captivated by the state’s diverse natural landscape. “It’s beautiful,” he says. “The mountains are drivable. It has a desert, it has a rainforest, it has some really amazing beaches, so I like to get outdoors and take my dog hiking.”
Upon moving to the state, he began a six-year teaching job at Wheatley School, which is a Special Education school of about 75 students, according to Harrison. “I usually had between 12 and 15 paraprofessionals in order to give everyone lunches and breaks and keep each student covered,” he says. He fondly remembers how practical and supportive the education at Wheatley School was; students’ education focused on providing them with an array of valuable experiences within the community. Harrison says, “Part of (students’) classwork is to go out into the community to have a job with one of our community partners, and that can be anything from a thrift store to a limo-driving company.”
After his years at Wheatley, Harrison eventually worked his way to becoming the vice principal of two Special Education schools: Arata Creek School in Troutdale, Oregon, and Burlingame Creek School in Gresham, Oregon. Both Arata Creek and Burlingame Creek are schools for children on Individualized Education Programs (IEPs), which are programs that lay out an educational plan tailored for students with disabilities. According to Harrison, these schools “serve students who are working their way back to a less restrictive environment.”
That experience in Special Education was what eventually got him recruited to Grant. “I was excited about the opportunity to continue my work with Special Education, which I love and am passionate about, and also to learn more about the regular education environment,” Harrison says.
Working as an educator and now a vice principal requires good time management and a solid schedule, two things Harrison prioritizes in his everyday routine. “Generally speaking, when you work in education, it’s early to rise, early to bed,” Harrison says. “I usually am out of bed at five or before five to take my dog for a walk in the pitch black.” He gets to Grant around 7:30 a.m. to prepare for another day of overseeing thousands of students.
During the winter months, Harrison’s packed schedule consists of arriving and leaving the building in the dark, which doesn’t allow for much free time. Despite this, Harrison aims to make as much time for himself and others as possible. “It’s important to establish time for yourself, your friends and your family,” he says. “Special Education has one of the highest rates of people quitting the field, quite frankly, because those are really tough jobs.”
Harrison notes that maintaining personal health is of the utmost importance in order to “last more than a decade” in such a challenging educational field. To prevent burnout, there are three aspects of personal health that Harrison tries to focus on every day: physical health, mental health, and intellectual health.
For his physical health, Harrison says, “I try to do some form of exercise every day.” To satisfy his mental health, “I try to do something that feeds my soul, whether that’s playing music or writing a friend a text message or an email to reconnect,” he says. Intellectually, Harrison strives to challenge his mind with things outside of the work environment. “That might be as simple as reading a book,” Harrison says. “It might be working on a professional problem that I find really interesting that I don’t normally make time for.”
Other hobbies also provide Harrison with a break from work, such as guitar and basketball. “I like to powerlift on a very amateur level. Emphasis on very amateur,” Harrison says. Besides staying physically fit, he has also done volunteer work. “I volunteered in the past for a great organization called Autism on the Seas,” he says, which is an international organization that uses cruise ships to take children with developmental, cognitive, and intellectual disabilities on maritime adventures.
Harrison accredits his morals and integrity to the people who helped him navigate the world growing up. “I went through a lot of struggles, grew up very, very poor, (with) not a lot of resources, but had a lot of privilege being a white male in … America — Texas, specifically,” he says. “I had people who cared for me and pointed me in the right direction with education, and taught me how to use my privilege and my place in society to protect those who needed protection, to support those who needed support and to be humble and accept that I don’t know everybody’s lived experience.”
While Harrison’s ambitions for Grant are still early in the stages of progression, they are motivated by his care for and experience with students, particularly in Special Education. “What I hope to bring to Grant is my experience in Special Education. I hope to use that to help our Special Education classes continue to grow and develop and support the incredible work that’s already being done here,” he says.
When he arrived at Grant, Harrison found the school had nine Special Education classrooms overall, something he hopes to expand upon. Harrison has made it a goal of his to assist teachers through the IEP process. “The individualized education process is lengthy and complicated. So that’s a big area where I want to provide support,” he says.
He also hopes to improve the Special Education program’s integration into regular education. To accomplish this, Harrison says he will be “working with regular education teachers to scaffold instruction to the level that’s appropriate for each student, and helping to provide the supports in regular education environments that they may not necessarily be aware of.”
Harrison’s overarching goal as vice principal is to take the support he received in his life and give it to the students he teaches, which he sees as an incredibly rewarding aspect of the job. “Now, after working very hard, I’m able to pay that (support) forward and help other kids that need a little bit of extra support to access a meaningful and rich education,” he says. “That’s what keeps me coming back and working in this field.”
