Jeff Burgess										March 2005

I was born in 1964 on the southern side of the Ozarks in Fayetteville, Arkansas, home of the Razorbacks.   I spent most of my childhood about another 50 miles south in the Fort Smith and Van Buren area.  After high school, I wandered aimlessly for a few years before deciding to dedicate my life to serving children by providing them with opportunities to experience successful and meaningful interactions through developmentally appropriate activities.   

I graduated cum laude from Evangel University in 1997 with a rare male bachelor’s degree in Elementary and Early Childhood Education.  After returning to a flooded market of recent-graduate educators in Western Arkansas that summer, I accepted an opportunistic challenge to teach in a Christian school in Guam that had an immediate need for teachers due to the sudden opening of Department of Defense schools on this remote U. S. territorial island.  Although I considered my first teaching venture a success, I decided to return home after only one year due to two major events.  My mother became ill soon after I left, and I returned home after Thanksgiving to spend three weeks with her before she died of complications from surgery to remove a cancerous tumor from her adrenal gland.  During my absence from Guam, a super typhoon devastated the island and took off the roof from the other end of the duplex that I had resided in.  

When I returned to mainland the following summer, I accepted a job at a Christian school in Northwest Arkansas for a minimal salary.  At the end of that year, I found better opportunities north of the border, and returned to the Show Me State to accept a sixth grade position at Plato, a rural, isolated district south of Fort Leonard Wood, with several students whose parents were employed at the army base.  Still single at the time, I desired to find something closer to civilization and closer to family in Northwestern Arkansas.  I relocated the next year and took on a challenging third grade Title I position at Purdy that was a temporary one-year assignment.  

The past four years of my life have been the most stable, and I feel like I am almost beginning to grow roots.  I was married in June of 2001 to a wonderful educator that is now a first year counselor at Republic Elementary II.  We purchased a home near Clever just before our wedding and I accepted a sixth grade position at Greenfield, a long drive at 50 miles one way.  I feel that my second and third years at Greenfield as a fourth grade teacher have been my most successful years as an educator.  However, due to the extensive travel required and lack of opportunity for advancement in this extremely rural community, I turned in my resignation, which led to disappointment among many of my coworkers.   This year I am teaching Title I Reading at Highlandville Elementary (Spokane District).

Also shortly after our wedding, I started a master’s program in Educational Administration at Southwest Baptist University in Bolivar. I graduated in July 2004 with a 4.0 GPA.

My long term goals are:

1)	To decide on continuing my education in one of two directions: an educational 	specialist’s degree or master’s degree in educational technology.

2)	To find ways to be more involved in the communities that I reside and work in.

For more information and pictures visit 
www.geocities.com/jefreebird