After over 40 years in education, Assistant Principal Jim Coe will retire at the end of the 2014-2015 school year.
From a young age, Coe knew he would work in education. His mother was a teacher at the grade school he attended in hometown, Yakima, Washington, and he was brought up in an education-driven household, so, when faced with the decision of pursuing a career in education or a career in engineering, the answer seemed clear. At age 22, Coe started a teaching assistant job in Seattle. He explains, “I didn’t really try any other professions, so at 22 I was working, right out of college, and now here I am.”
San Mateo County has been a home for Coe’s family of five and career for 40 years. Before becoming Aragon’s Assistant Principal, Coe held positions as an English teacher and administrator at other schools in San Mateo County. He says, “I’ve been here for 16 years at Aragon, 10 years at Capuchino, and about 15 years at Serra High School, and two to three years at other places.”
Working primarily with administration and department heads, Coe misses the regular interaction with students that comes with being a teacher. Because much of his time is spent organizing tests, Coe enjoys the times he gets to spend advising new teachers. He says, “I have about 25 years of experience in the classroom, so I know classroom teaching pretty well. I have the ability to share some skills, share some techniques that make a classroom run better, have the students learn more, and that’s what it’s all about. How much learning can you put into a 51-minute or a 90-minute period, and how to get the most use out of the time that we have?”
Principal Pat Kurtz works closely with Coe, and she is sad to see him go. Kurtz says, “He has a great sense of humor, and he really does put students first. When he’s making a decision, he’s making it based off the needs of the students. And he’s a former English teacher, so he’s kind of my editor, too. He proofreads for me. He’s just a very nice person to know, and he’s just always very kind and respectful.”
Having spent all of his profession working with teenagers, Coe enjoys the youthful atmosphere, saying, “[The faculty] can all continue to grow older, but the attitudes of what it’s like to be a high school student still remain. So that’s kind of nice. [It’s] like a time machine.”
Coe has also had the privilege of witnessing the changes made to Aragon over the last 10 years. A key asset in these transformations, Coe says, “[Jim Smith] and I worked together on the CTE building one Christmastime. And a year later, the plan was accepted, and two years later, there it is. You know, that’s pretty gratifying because if two people didn’t go into a room and say, ‘Hey, you know, I think we can write a grant, get this thing going,’ stuff just doesn’t happen.”
Although he is retiring, Kurtz hopes Coe will not be gone forever, saying, “We will always have reasons for him to come back. And I think he’d like to, but I think he wants to retire first and see what retirement is like. And then he’s going to miss us all and we’ll tell him, ‘Come back! Help us out!’”
Coe adds, “It’s a school with a vision … We have a pretty definite way we want to go. We think it’s in the best interest of the students. And I would say it’s been one of the few big collaborative faculties that I’ve met. I mean, you can say that you’re for the students, but you really have to walk the walk, and the faculty here walks the walk pretty well.”
