The Academic Support office offers services such as tutoring, advising, and general help for students with, or without, learning disabilities. Richard Simmons is JSC’s learning specialist responsible for…….
Q: What is the worst job that you have ever had?
A: The worst job I’ve ever had has to be when I was a teenager. I grew up in south Florida, and I worked for an outdoor sign company. I was working in the shop, and I did a lot of prep work painting all of the various different angle irons and things that they used to build all of these big billboards with. One Saturday morning I was sent out to work with a crew, and I didn’t think too much about that. Then I found out that the sign I was working on, the cat walk alone was 75 feet off the ground, and the sign went another 25 feet, and I’m afraid of heights.
Q: Why did you seek this job, and what has it been like thus far?
A: I have been a behavior specialist and a special educator at Milton High School for the last 14 years, and I co-directed their alternative program for a couple of years, I was involved in that. Then, the way that the system changed there, they began using special educators as co-teachers within the classroom. So I was co-teaching geometry during the day, and I just really found that I just really did not care for being in the classroom. I loved the kids, I loved the teachers that I worked with, all of them, but I really like one-on-one kind of problem solving and supporting students in that way.
Q: If you had one way to describe yourself, what would it be and why?
A: One word to describe myself. I would say “curious,” because I’m pretty curious about a lot of different things in life. I like to learn, and I am amazed. I’m going to be 60 this year at the end of August, and I am amazed at some of the things that I was such an adamant believer in, or the beliefs that I’ve had. How much I’ve changed, and how much they’ve grown over the years. It’s just because I’m curious. You know I keep searching out new things and trying to hear other news, and one of my favorite things is, and I say it all the time in here to people when they struggle with things is, “Seek to understand, before being understood.”
Q: What have students taught you that you may not have learned at a different job?
A: I’ve got a number of students that come through with really incredible, hard life situations, and so I think they’ve really taught me about resiliency, and just how hard that struggle really is sometimes. You know the cost to some of them of being here, not financially, but in regard to their family relationships, and all of those things as well.
Q: Do you think social functions are important to the college experience?
A: Oh, without a doubt, yeah, because I think that one of the most important things with social functions is that they bring you into cross-cultural functions, or cross-cultural relationships. In my college days, I went to the University of Florida in the Seventies, early Seventies, and that was probably the most enlightening thing for me. To have students from all over the country, and all over the world, they challenged some of my beliefs and some of my ways of life, and caused me to have to listen more, and kind of expand. I think those social events are paramount to that, to bringing people together.
Q: Do you have any guilty pleasures?
A: Guilty pleasures, huh? I like Craft beers. That and um, what else? I’m not a big TV watcher so I can’t say that there are any particular shows. I like to play guitar if that is a guilty pleasure.
Q: Can you tell me about the most fun you’ve had working here at JSC?
A: Gosh, that’s hard to narrow down. You know, I can’t nail that down to one experience. I’ve just have fun working here in general. I’ve got a great bunch of people that I work with in this department, and they were very accepting of me, and received me, and we just seemed to click, you know? So I would say my job is the most fun experience I’ve had here.
Q: What are the biggest challenges you face on a day to day basis?
A: Getting everything done. The time management piece, because, especially at this time of year where I am writing a lot of accommodation letters, and that type of thing, but you wear a lot of different hats in this job. So, you know, you have to be knowledgeable of the law, and [know] how to read evaluation reports, and understand not just what a person’s disability might be, but who they are as a learner and how they think. That’s equally important if not more so. It’s getting it all done, and getting it all done well.
Q: What’s the worst thing anyone has ever said to you?
A: The worst thing anything has ever said to me. Gosh, that is a hard one. I would say it would have to do with telling me that I can’t accomplish something, because that just makes me want to do it then.
Q: If you had enough money to retire now, would you?
A: No, I would probably still do this job, but if I had lots of money, if I won the lottery, I would be setting up different foundations to do different things, scholarship money for kids, various different ways to help people. I like to help people. That’s one of the reasons I like this job.
Q: Is there anything else you think the Johnson State community should know about you?
A: Just that my door is always open, and I’m always open to hear a way that I might assist somebody in some way. It doesn’t necessarily mean that I’m able to do it, but I’m open to hear, and to see if I can help in some way or connect them with someone who can help them. I just really believe in community and supporting one another.
