| Lanzas to go half-time | | Print | |
| Written by Beatrix Zenger | |
| Wednesday, 27 May 2009 | |
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As the budget dwindles, Grant faces more and more cuts to their faculty. Cuts in each department are done by seniority. The faculty is ranked by their years teaching overall and not just by their years teaching at Grant. Cassandre Lanzas is the junior in the Social Studies department and next year her position at Grant will be as a part time teacher, instead of full time. Earlier this year, Grant's principal asked for volunteers to take half days. Lanzas decided it was something she could do financially and explains that it’s better than making someone else take the part time position when they can’t afford the cut. Lanzas has been teaching for six years and has only taught at Grant. She decided to go into teaching when she was 19 and working in a day-care. “The curriculum there was rigorous,” she explains, “it was a lot more than just babysitting, but I found that I loved interacting with the kids.” After getting her bachelors at Portland State University and her masters at Lewis and Clark University, Lanzas was ready to teach. Finding that she preferred high school to the lower grades, Lanzas got a job at Grant teaching AP economics and world history. Next year, Lanzas assumes she will continue to teach economics and world history, but all her classes will either be in the morning or afternoon, which on our current schedule, leaves one day a week that she doesn’t have to come to school at all. With her new found free time, Lanzas is entertaining the idea of taking more classes. She doesn’t plan to enroll in an educational program, but she likes the idea of working toward a second masters degree. While losing a portion of your job due to a poor budget is never a nice thing to face, Lanzas is taking it gracefully and optimistically. “I think it will be a good change for me,” she says. “A little sad, but a positive change.” |
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