Jamaica Reed is our teacher that works in the Success Center, and this is her first year teaching at ADM High School. Reed’s hometown is Adair, where she currently still lives. Reed said, “It’s a 40-minute drive on the interstate to Adel, but I enjoy commuting and my driving is my thinking time.”

Reed has been married for 14 years and has two stepsons, one of whom goes to UNI in Cedar Falls, and the other one is currently serving the country in the National Guard. She also has a daughter who is 12 and a 7th grader at ACGC. Along with her kids and husband, she has one dog, Tito, who is a blind, 12-year-old Yorkie.

Reed originally went to college for pre-med at Simpson. When she was a junior in college, she decided that she didn’t want to have anymore schooling, and talked to a counselor at Simpson who led her to teaching.

Reed started off her teaching career with science classes at Audubon. She taught Physical Science, Biology, Anatomy and Physiology, Forensics and Electricity. Then, she started teaching at Nodaway Valley where she taught high school science but got more involved with instructional coaching.

Reed was on the grant writing committee for Teacher Leadership. When Iowa passed that grant, she had a full-time coaching position. But she wanted to be with students, not adults. She was interested in helping “at-risk” kids because she felt as though she would have the most impact there and she was one herself, too. She could connect to them in a variety of ways.

Her first impression of ADM was the size. It was bigger than her other schools and she has enjoyed that. Now that she’s been here a couple of months, she enjoys it here and likes getting to know everyone. Reed said that she was, “impressed at the parent support here. They’re way more involved here.” The Ag classes are still very common, and there’s PLC here, but there isn’t PLC at other schools. Reed likes the feeling that all teachers are in it together. She thinks they work well together.

Reed doesn’t like future plans, she doesn’t want to limit herself to anything. She says, “people get stuck in the mindset and it closes opportunities off.” She knows this from experience when she went from wanting to be a doctor for 20 years to teaching.