Reed Scott Schwalbach

I was born in SE Alaska and grew up in Alaska and later Micronesia, where we moved when I was nine. We moved because my mother, a Special Education expert, followed one of her best friends, who worked in Early Intervention Special Education, to the island of Saipan. That’s where I developed my love for learning languages and cultures, and from an early age volunteered in my mother’s classroom to work with students with complex physical and learning needs. I saw first hand the difference early intervention makes, and the deep impact on a young person when support for basics like toilet training or language development are not provided early in their life. I came to Oregon to study at Pacific University, where I got my undergraduate degree and earned a license to teach Spanish. I also spent a year of college in Ecuador, where I focused on bilingual education issues between Quichua and Spanish. My professional work has been split between working with high school students to develop their language skills and bilingual pride in Spanish and working with adults in labor and political activism. I started teaching at Centennial High School in East Multnomah County in 1999, where I founded our Spanish for Native Speakers program, our summer international homestay program, and was honored to participate in a year-long Mexico/US Fulbright Teacher Exchange job swap. I was elected to the Oregon Education Association (OEA) Board of Directors in 2009, and the National Education Association (NEA) Board of Directors in 2015. I spent two years focused on federal lobbying through NEA before taking a leave from the classroom after I was elected OEA Vice President and then President. Some of the biggest wins during my four terms in OEA office was the passage of the Student Success Act and the increase in educators running (and winning!) for public office, and some of the biggest challenges were navigating the response and impact of COVID-19 with Governor Brown, OHA and school leaders, plus dealing with a large budget deficit we had at OEA. My experience running OEA taught me a lot about private sector business practices and adult management. Currently, I am very happy to be back at Centennial High School (the school district was generous to hold my job for me), and after eight years of being out of the classroom, I am loving the joy and the intense rigor of creating learning environments that fascinate, engage and inspire both my students and myself as we work together.