Teacher Saves World!
We started Teacher Saves World! to unite teachers and parents in saving the world, one teenager at a time. We're high school teachers and parents of two teens ourselves, so while we love the little ones, that turbulent time between childhood and adulthood is our wheelhouse. We also think high school is four of the most important years in a person's life, and each teen needs an army of caring adults that are dedicated to making sure they're ready to thrive in adulthood. We're taking an Avengers approach: We need everybody to pitch in! We're all superheroes when we care about helping teenagers grow up into confident and capable adults.
Working with teenagers can be exhilarating, rewarding, and extremely frustrating. Often all at once. The world needs them to grow up and take over when we're done. They'll probably need to fix a bunch of stuff we messed up, too. They'll need to be confident, brave, and smart. They'll need to be creative, and they'll need to be strong communicators. They'll need to lead, and they'll need to work together. But before any of that can happen, they need teachers, parents, and mentors of all types to show them how and guide their development.
Join us in the fight for a better tomorrow! Listen to our podcasts, read our blog, join the community, connect with us on social media, share your ideas, send us an email, and maybe even give us a call. Together we can do this! The world is counting on us.
February 2000, Los Angeles. 4 months after our wedding and 3 years before children. What happened?
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Class of 1987 Most Likely to Never Get Married to Each Other
After getting hitched in Laurie's hometown of Kailua, Hawaii in 1999, we began our adventure in education after a string of post-college pursuits left us looking for something more meaningful. We found it in teaching! Our passion for working with teenagers has taken us to both public and private schools, in both California and Hawaii. Between us we have almost forty years of teaching experience in sixth through twelfth grade, four teaching credentials (Long Beach State), and two Master's Degrees in Multicultural and Social Justice Education (Fresno State). We've advised clubs, coached teams, directed plays, produced newspapers and yearbooks, hosted dances, been an Activities Director, a Summer School Vice Principal, a Literacy Coach, a mentor teacher, and served on so many committees it's embarrassing. None of it, however, is as challenging as parenting our two teenagers in a technology-saturated world. We've spent the last decade teaching at the same public high school in California's San Joaquin Valley, where we live with our son, daughter, and three rescue dogs.
Matt & Laurie Jones
January 2020, Kailua Beach, Oahu. After 20 years of teaching and 16 years of parenting. That's what happened.