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Alumni Highlight: Christine James ’99

RE alumna Christine James '99 teaches high school U.S. History and middle school World History at a full magnet school. She recently received Miami-Dade's County's Public School Teacher of the Year award for her work and is currently enrolled a school administrator training program. How did she get there? With a
Master of Education degree from the University of Florida and a Doctor of Education from NYU.
RE: What year did you graduate?
CJ: 1999
 
RE: What were your extracurricular activities when at RE?
CJ: Swimming, soccer and track. I was also the Black Students Association president from 1998 to 1999.
 
RE: Where did you attend college?
CJ: I went to University of Florida
 
RE: What was your major?
CJ: I majored in Elementary Education
 
RE: What was your first ever job?
CJ: When I was at RE I was a summer camp counselor
 
RE: What’s one of the best things you learned about yourself at RE?
CJ: I learned that while the work may be hard, the process may be challenging, once you get through that test, you will see that that process enabled the future ones to be easy.
 
RE: What is your favorite part of your job?
CJ: I love the “Ohhh, I get it,” when the students understand that whatever they were working on was hard in the beginning but now it isn’t so hard. That also leads them to realize the need for the struggle and not to be so afraid of it.
 
RE: Who was your favorite RE teacher and why?
CJ: Mrs. Caroline Lewis. She was like a teacher/mother. She didn’t let us get away with anything, but she did it in a way that made us grateful for it. She is fun and she had a way of delivering a lesson that had us so engaged.
 
RE: What album did you have on repeat the year you graduated?
CJ: This one was tough for me. I have to say it was "The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill."
 
RE: What do you do in your spare time?
CJ: I spend time listening to music.
 
RE: What motivates you to get out of bed in the morning?
CJ: The fact that I woke up motivates me to get out of bed.
 
RE: What is one of your favorite quotes?
CJ: I have to say there are so many. But the one that I come back to repeatedly is “Those who say they can and those who say they can’t are both right.”
 
RE: What book are you currently reading?
CJ: I wish I had time to read a book.
 
RE: What is something your teachers would be surprised to learn about you?
CJ: Being a teacher now I get surprised when they tell me how I impacted their lives or when they tell me about a lesson they remember 10 years later. I think my former teachers may be surprised to know that I really did listen to them and how I internalized their lessons. Ms. Rose had the dreaded “Junior Thesis” in her class. My thesis was on an author that wasn’t in “the cannon” of British literature but the focus of the thesis for me was “the other.” I liked that she was different and that her poetry and writing didn’t fit into an established norm. That she just did her thing. At the time I didn’t realize the deeper meaning of this. But as I developed in my career, I realize that students tend to think of themselves as “the other.” I am poised now to encourage them to harness their “otherness” and have everyone around them VALUE it. I think at RE we are all “the others.” The school is exceptional and very different. We were taught to harness it and full fill our extraordinariness. We valued our “otherness” and now I use their lessons with not only myself, but my students.
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Founded in 1903, Ransom Everglades School is a coeducational, college preparatory day school for grades 6 - 12 located on two campuses in Coconut Grove, Florida. Ransom Everglades School produces graduates who "believe that they are in the world not so much for what they can get out of it as for what they can put into it." The school provides rigorous college preparation that promotes the student's sense of identity, community, personal integrity and values for a productive and satisfying life, and prepares the student to lead and to contribute to society.