Fifth grade
John Becker
Email me at jbecker@hlacharter.com
My name is John Becker, and while this is my first year teaching at Healthy Learning Academy, I have been a 4th and 5th grade teacher at Alachua Elementary School for the past 14 years.
I was born and raised in upstate New York, just outside of Albany. New York was my home for twenty-four years, and I attended Ithaca College, where I received my B.S. in Communications in 1994. Shortly after graduating, I moved to Seattle, Washington, in hopes of breaking into the creative realm of advertising. While I never became the Art Director that I envisioned myself as, I did work as an editor for two years before I got the opportunity to flex my creative muscles as Marketing Assistant at Pacific Trading Cards, Inc. Here, I wrote and designed baseball, football, and hockey trading cards, as well as a nationally-televised commercial and numerous magazine advertisements. I even wrote a book on collecting trading cards that was published and distributed by Scholastic Books. Still, something was missing, and I felt unfulfilled.
During my college years, I spent my summers working as a camp counselor, and found that working with children to be extremely rewarding. As soon as my mother, a former high school English teacher, and father, a former attorney for the New York State Department of Transportation, retired and made Gainesville their new home, I decided that it was time to be closer to my family and re-evaluate my life. No matter what possible employment opportunities I considered, I knew that I would never be content if I weren’t working with children. Within months, I was enrolled in the SITE-based program at the University of Florida, and obtained my Masters in Elementary Education in less than a year. While taking classes, I interned at Lawton Chiles Elementary School in a language arts 4th grade classroom and helped our school achieve the highest writing scores in the state for that year. Before my internship was even over, Mr. Brandenburg, former principal of Alachua Elementary School, hired me as a fifth grade teacher, and I had been there ever since.
I look forward to working with each and every one of you to make sure that your children receive the best possible education, and that they are given the skills needed to become successful, productive members of society.
Working together, I know that we will have a great school year!