One new addition to the high school staff this year is Jeffery Fox, who teaches sophomore and freshman English honors classes. His teaching philosophy includes him solely believing in the future of education within his students and promotes them to pursue whatever they want to do. He believes it’s his job to help them prepare for that journey.

“Everybody should have the opportunity to do whatever it is that they want to be able to do,” Fox said.

Fox originally came from another schooling institution but insisted he come here to improve and push himself.

“I wanted to teach at this school because I wanted an opportunity to become a better teacher, and that was not going to be possible where I was, and so coming here and having new opportunities and new challenges is going to allow me hopefully to become a better teacher,” Mr. Fox said.

In the beginning he didn’t believe in becoming a teacher, but that changed when he saw how learning moments can impact someone like himself. As a child he expressed that he was not allowed to speak during movies when he watched them with family, but when he was curious about the movie while watching it, his father made an exception to help him with his confusion.

“My dad actually took the time to explain the movie ‘Space Odyssey’ to me step by step as we went through, and so that really kind of gave me an appreciation for teaching, and I wanted to be able to do for other people what my dad did for me,” he said.

Like many students at Melissa, Mr. Fox took an interest in Marvel early on in childhood, and it reflects throughout his classroom, which is covered in superheroes to Marvel artwork.

“Marvel has been a happy place for me since I was very little, and so I grew up on the comics,” he said.

Mr. Fox makes his passion for teaching aware by providing his students the best possible experience with his effort to prepare them for next year, and this is seen from his ability to seek out problems that students such as the seniors have from his wife’s class and what they struggle with.

“It is nice because I’m able to know what my students need,” he said. “I know what the issues are with the students, not with the students, but the issues that the students have in her class, and so I know what to make sure y’all are prepared for next year.”

Mr. Fox provides an education that many students would describe as “unique,” and it is seen that he cares about his students and the experiences he provides is helpful.

“I think the way that I see the world and the way that I see how all of the pieces of somebody’s education fit together is probably what makes me different than a lot of other teachers,” he said.