This week’s OCHS Staff Spotlight is Ms. Jessica Blankenship. This is Ms. Blankenship’s 3rd year of teaching, having also taught Language Arts, Social Studies, & ISAP at Ohio County Middle School. She attended college at Western Kentucky University and the University of the Cumberlands. She currently teaches 9th grade Language Arts and Social Studies.

Ms. Blankenship’s transition from middle school to high school went well for her. In fact, the change in maturity has allowed her to engage more in actual classwork than in student conduct. As she said, “It’s actually very similar having freshmen to 7th graders…there is actually a big jump from 7th grade to 8th grade in maturity level. So I do enjoy getting to be more on-topic and on-brand rather than, like, behavior modification.”

Ms. Blankenship is glad she gets to teach Social Studies, and fortunately has Language Arts experience. When asked if there were other subjects she might be interested in teaching, she expressed, she would like to try teaching Criminal Justice: “Mr. Monin has, like, a Criminal Justice class, and I am a true crime fan through and through. So, I would love to maybe see what all that class entails, and maybe someday, far far in the future, I think that would be a neat subject for me.”

In her final thoughts, Ms. Blankenship expressed how she believes change is possible at any time in your life. Before becoming a teacher, she worked in compliance banking. Having always enjoyed working with kids at her church, Mr. Schrader, the principal of the middle school at the time, encouraged Ms. Blankenship to become a teacher. She became an assistant at OCMS for a semester, and when she saw what teachers were doing, she decided that’s what she wanted to do for her next career. She advises others, “It’s never too late to take stock in what you’re doing and say ‘Is this what’s best for me? Is this what’s really filling my cup?”

OCHS is glad to have Ms. Blankenship as a teacher at our school! 

Profile By: Michael Smith

Photo By: Eagle Media