As De La Soul said, “three is a magic number.” Mythical Cerberus has three heads. There are three musketeers, three little pigs and three blind mice. Three is also the number of careers that new teacher Mr. Jason Perkins had before teaching earth science.
“After I graduated high school, I went to Edinboro University of Pennsylvania [and] played [American] football there,” Mr. Perkins said. “Then I went and had an opportunity to play football in Europe and live in the South of France….I played for the Argonauts, which is a team that was running up there in the European Football League.”
He moved back to the United States after two and a half years and decided to start his own business. He worked for himself for 10 years. His business was both an advertising promotion company and a food distribution company.
“It was an advertising promotion company and a food distribution company, so it really has two pieces to that,” Mr. Perkins said. “I used to distribute McKee food products, Sunbelt food products [which includes] cereals and granola bars, [and] Little Debbie snack cakes…Then the other part of that was I was promoting for [the] 9:30 Club, the Crossroads, [and] a lot of different music venues or gogo bands.”
He was inspired to have his own business for several reasons.
“I have always had an entrepreneurial mindset,” Mr. Perkins said. “When I found out how little teachers earn in Ohio, I decided to start my own business. I had help from my mother and father, both of whom had their own businesses.”
When he moved to the D.C. metropolitan area, he decided to return to teaching. Before he had played football in Europe, he received his master’s degree in education at George Washington University. He has now taught in many school districts such as in Washington, D.C., Southern Maryland, Alexandria and Falls Church. In those school districts, he had experience teaching special education and general education.
“In Falls Church City, I was exclusively a special education teacher, but I was really serving only science classrooms at the high school level,” Mr. Perkins said. “I worked as an intensive alternative behavior specialist in Fairfax County Public Schools, and that was a very intense job where you have students that have significant emotional and behavioral disabilities.”
His own experiences in the field as a young kid drove him to work in special education.
“As a kid, I was diagnosed with dyslexia, ADHD, and had a specific learning disability,” Mr. Perkins said. “So I had obstacles myself to overcome to try and do well in school and I knew that I was different from other people….So having the coaches that I’ve worked with support me [and] having a teacher that invested time and energy into me helped me find my way going to college and every year I progressed and continued to become more proficient in school and academics.”
He is a certified special education teacher and taught a variety of classes in Falls Church City and Fairfax County.
“I have one co-taught class with me and a special education teacher,” Mr. Perkins said. “This class has several students with individualized education plans (IEPs). I have two classes that are smaller, and all the students have an IEP. The final two of my five classes are ‘standard’ classes, also known as general education classes.”
He is excited to be getting back into general education. He believes the classes offered at the school can be categorized as standard/general education, co-taught, self-contained, or intensified.
“I’ll be teaching Earth Science,” Mr. Perkins said. “I think it’s kind of an underrated science as far as the knowledge that it can supply you with to make the right choices in the future.”
In his free time, he likes to spend time with his daughters, travel, ride horses, bike on trails and ride his motorcycle. Through all of his experiences, he feels that he has learned so much as a teacher and educator.
“I’ve learned that no matter where you go, there are good people: excellent, knowing people that have drive, motivation, and desire to do well,” Mr. Perkins said. “As much as I’ve been in such diverse settings as far as very affluent settings all the way down to very impoverished settings, we find that kids really just want an opportunity to feel comfortable, feel safe, and express themselves.”
