If roaming the halls in fifth period, there’s a 25% chance students will find special education Algebra 1 teacher James Johnson doing some laps of his own. After years of lifeguarding and now managing The Water Mine Family Swimmin’ Hole, it’s in his blood to keep an eye out.

“That’s my summer job and I love it,” Johnson said. “It was a pretty hectic summer; there were a lot of emergencies to respond to and lifeguards to work with.”

The staff at The Water Mine watched this summer as Johnson prepared for his first school year on the other side of the desk and reportedly called him “Mr. Johnson” instead of James in the last weeks of the season. But Johnson says his lifeguards might be more similar to his students than expected.

“Working with 14, 15, 16-year-olds on customer service skills is just as much of a challenge as graphing lines or solving equations,” Johnson said. “Sometimes, customer service skills might be more challenging than graphing a line.”

Johnson has experience teaching both. He spends his summers as a lifeguard instructor and after he graduated from Westfield High School, Johnson studied special education in the general curriculum setting at Virginia Wesleyan University in Virginia Beach. Now, Johnson pursues his masters degree in transition services from a classroom of his own.

“Being a product of Fairfax County Public Schools, I wanted to contribute to the school system that I was a part of,” Johnson said. “Going to school in Virginia Beach, I learned a lot from different perspectives, but I realized that Fairfax County’s pretty special and I wanted to come back.”

In his time at Westfield, Johnson was involved in Best Buddies, started a Special Olympics team and says he connected with students who received higher levels of support. It was at Wesleyan, though, that he discovered what special education looks like in the general education setting.

“Through some experiences in college working with students in the general curriculum setting, working with their general ed peers, I really enjoyed that a lot,” Johnson said. “Just seeing how some accommodations or just a little bit of extra support can really make a huge difference has been really cool to see.”

Johnson says he always enjoyed math and science from a student’s perspective. In studying the teaching of math, however, he discovered all the ways in which educators may adapt their teaching methods to best support their students.

“Algebra, being a little bit more abstract, it’s a fun curriculum to do specially designed instruction and to add in student supports to make it special ed,” Johnson said. “The stuff that happens to algebra, it’s just more exciting, like using Desmos to make it more visual or having a colorful room, using whiteboards and stuff like that, I think you can just have a lot more fun in math.”

And Johnson says he absolutely is having fun in math. As a first-year teacher, the experience he draws from is from studying education. In the first weeks of the school year, Johnson says, he’s making connections from the textbooks he read in his classes to real-life happenings in his own classroom.

”There’s been a lot of moments where I’m like ‘Oh that one time I read an article, sophomore year, about a similar situation, I can really apply that here,’” Johnson said. “Being able to apply that has been really cool.”