Hello! My name is Jim Mroz, and I am a teacher in Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS) but am also excited to be a student in the Blended and Online Learning in Schools (BOLS) Master’s Degree Program. What follows is some information to help you get to know me.

My Career and Professional Accomplishments

 My first significant career role was as a production editor for a business publications firm that was adopting desktop publishing in 1989. I loved working with a double-screen Macintosh computer to do layout, fine-tune the articles and create tables and graphics at a time when most publications were still laid out by gluing down strips of film on “blues.” For a time, I felt like an expert in modern technology!

•  I am a career switcher, having worked for almost 18 years as a writer, editor, and marketing director in a variety of business areas, including consumer and medical advertising, business publications, and contract work to support communications by government programs. 
• When a company I helped get started sold the publication I edited to a competitor, a lot of colleagues and friends said, “You should be a teacher,” since I had served as a teacher of sorts by recruiting experts to write articles and teaching them how to become effective writers.
• I have been an English teacher in FCPS since the Fall of 2003 and started out teaching English 9 and 10 but was de-staffed and ended up teaching English 8 and English 8 Honors initially and then also Advanced Academic Program (AAP) English 8.
•  I have been teaching at Lake Braddock Secondary School for 13 years, and I began to teach only AAP English 8 classes last year. I have been using Blackboard for years with my AAP students to provide content online, but the goal was often online to replace printed short stories and articles with online versions, although I have used blogs and wikis to get my students to interact with texts and research results in order to create presentations and products/content to be shared with peers and others. I have also been incorporating YouTube videos that introduce or reinforce lessons in a fun and different way, such as this one involving Weird Al Yankovic regarding grammar and the video below that I use to introduce historical research my students will undertake to build background knowledge before reading The Scarlet Pimpernel, which is set during the Reign of Terror.

My Personal Information and Accomplishments

•  I am originally from Queens, NY, lived in a village on Long Island during my teen years, attended college in Boston, lived in Brooklyn and Manhattan, NY, after college, and moved to the Washington, DC, metropolitan area in 1994. I have lived in Fairfax County since 1996, making it the location where I have spent the longest part of my life. When I am tired, I still demonstrate a “New York” accent, even though I lost much of my Queens accent in college.
•  I have been married for 26 years, and we have a daughter attending Virginia Tech as a sophomore. She and I joke about the fact that Mom is the only one not attending college, although she works in the Budget Office at George Mason University. So, technically, all three of us are “in” college.
• I graduated with BAs in English and History from the College of Arts and Science at Boston College, having been in the Honors Program and graduating as a Scholar of the College. As a teacher, I try to emulate the best techniques my professors in college and my teachers in high school demonstrated, so I am very fortunate to have had some great teachers.
•  I started skiing regularly after college and continue to love skiing when there is sufficient snow in Pennsylvania or West Virginia and my daughter is home or some friends are going.
• I am an avid cyclist, even though I will never be the best. I find great relaxation when I am road biking and am hoping, after I finish the BOLS program, to start taking part in group rides that are far longer than my normal ones. What I appreciate is both the impact on my body of riding regularly and the quiet and self-connection that occurs when it is just me on my bike, particularly on a dedicated bike trail.

My wife and I dancing during a scene from Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat
in March 2018. I played one of Joseph's brothers, and my wife played...my wife. Typecasting!

• I also have the theater bug. I participated in “drama club” in high school and acted in several shows then that enabled me to go from being very shy to comfortable standing up in front of a class or interacting with students and parents. After high school, I did not perform in shows until my wife got involved in a musical theater group based at our old church and asked me to help out with a scene in a production of The Music Man. I have now appeared on stage in leading and supporting roles in 15 musicals. I believe my theatrical experience makes me a more effective teacher.