Working Hard: Featuring Mrs.Coulombe

Karen Coulombe is a CTE(career and technical education) teacher here at Cavelero Mid-high who teaches computer science and computer applications. Cavelero students can get college credits in both of her classes, as well as Microsoft certifications and other things that look great on resumes. While Mrs.Coulombe is an amazing teacher, she didn’t want to originally be a teacher while growing up, instead she wanted to be a forest ranger, she even took classes to become one: “I actually took a lot of classes… I did animal husbandry and I did renewable natural resources,” Obviously Mrs.Coulombe did not end up doing what she originally planned to do in life and one of the many important things that she tries to teach in her class is that you may never know what’s going to happen. This is one of many reasons that Mrs.Coulombe pushes kids in her classes to get the possible college credits so they can be prepared.

Not only did Mrs.Coulombe change what she wanted her occupation to be, she also had inconveniences while doing so. Originally, Mrs.Coulombe worked at Sno-Isle tech teaching kids electronics, but as the school districts started to offer more electives (including electronics and robotics), Sno-Isle tech slowly lost students, causing teachers to have to find new jobs. Mrs.Coulombe was one of those displaced Sno-Isle teachers. “I had to be flexible enough to change what I was teaching to this which was quite different from electronics, trust me.” When Mrs.Coulombe says “this” she is referring to computer applications and computer science. This inconvenience shows how things were evolving years ago, and they obviously still are today, you’ve gotta be prepared and willing to adapt which is something Mrs.Coulombe focuses on. 

 As already mentioned, Cavelero students are able to take Microsoft certification tests in Mrs.Coulombes classes and this is all thanks to her taking the time to become a proctor. A proctor is a person who monitors students during tests, making sure they are not cheating or talking to one another. Becoming a proctor takes a lot of work, and to do that work you need motivation; Mrs.Coulombe’s motivation to become a proctor was because of her computer application class. 

“When i first started teaching computer apps the first thing i did was i went over to everett community college where they teach the same thing, and see exactly how their teaching it and what their outcomes were,” says Mrs.Coulombe, “I wanted to math whatever they did here because if we’re going to get the college credit for their classes we should be doing exactly what their doing… Their outcomes are those certifications so we need those outcomes and to get those I have to become a proctor.” You may be thinking that Mrs.Coulombe should’ve become a proctor because that was the job she applied for but she always could’ve hired a proctor or talked to the school about having one come in during class once or twice a month so students can take the Microsoft certification tests. Instead of doing that, Mrs.Coulombe took it upon herself to become a proctor. Because Mrs.Coulombe did this and so many more things to help students achieve their full potential. Even though Mrs.Coulombe plays a big role in many students’ lives, she still states “I am just one person out of 50, 200, 300 people that’s gonna help that kid reach their full potential, but if they remember one thing that came out of my class that makes me feel great.” She continued to talk about one of her former students who said her class was a class of common sense and she said “that’s the best thing ever.” 

So now that you, the reader knows how much Mrs.Coulombe does for her students. Here’s the surprise, she’s not the only teacher who goes above and beyond for their students  after having not had an easy life. Teachers do so much for students so the real question is, what can students do for teachers? Mrs.Coulombe says,  “They shouldn’t have to do anything to make it more enjoyable for teachers. We’re here because we like doing this. They should make their experience better so to make their experience better not ours, cause theirs not ours to make our experience better  but to make their experience better they should look around with an open mind and realize that every kid here is gonna be a different person in four years… If they can recognize that and sort of be nicer to people like and by nicer I don’t mean ‘I’m gonna bring you cookies’ I mean like I see you struggling over there trying to remember your password im just gonna be very nice and go ‘oh don’t forget the capital C’.” As Mrs.Coulombe was talking about wanting students to help eachother out, one student, Jayden Arce, got up and helped one of the students who had a question. This is only one of many examples of things Mrs.Coulombe loves to see her students do. Thankyou for working hard Mrs.Coulombe, we all appreciate you, faculty and students.