Before starting their jobs as teachers, some had jobs through high school and college. 

Spanish teacher Dane Leone started working when he was in tenth grade at a place similar to Blockbuster and stayed there for four years. 

“My first job was working at a used CD, DVD, video game, vinyl, record store out near Pittsburgh at a place called CD Warehouse. We sold video game systems and refurbished them and cleaned them,” Leone said. “The cool part about it is that I was interested in music. So I learned a ton about music because we would have these big racks of different genres and artists, and we would have to go through them everyday and alphabetize them. So I would literally have to sift through thousands of CDs every day to make sure they were in order, so I learned a lot about different artists and music I didn’t know about before.”

According to Leone, he learned many skills from working at CD Warehouse such as people skills, teamwork and time management. 

“In terms of skills that ended up helping me out in life, my people skills definitely improved because I was working at a customer driven business. Even if a customer may be wrong I should still treat them with respect and kindness and make sure they aren’t leaving the store angry,” Leone said. “It was also nice because I was working with one other person. There were only two people working in the store at one time, so we learned to divide and conquer with certain things and learned some teamwork and team building skills because at times we would be busy so one of us would have to be in the back or at the register so time management is something that I learned.” 

Leone originally wanted to be a chemical engineer in high school, but changed his mind when he took AP Chemistry. When he started at Penn State, he was studying finance and accounting and wasn’t connected to any of his classes. He then applied to an orientation program which works with incoming freshmen. 

“The summer going into my sophomore year I was hired as an orientation leader. In that environment, part of what we did had us in the classrooms giving presentations and talking to the seniors because they were still in school, and we were teaching them about Penn State,” Leone said. “I really liked that age group and liked working with young learners. It was after that that I made the change to get into education. I knew I was going to study Spanish, so I took the two and just kind of combined it. After that year, they created a new position called the student coordinator for the orientation program, which I got my sophomore year. We taught courses to the orientation leaders to teach them how to be orientation leaders. I was already teaching college courses, obviously with the supervision of higher ups, but it was really cool to do that because it helped me realize that I like teaching and delivering content to younger students. That job in particular is one of the big reasons why I am teaching Spanish in Altoona right now.” 

According to Leone, a very interesting job he had was working on a farm his senior year going into college.

“My best friend and I got a job working for this one guy on his farm and we aren’t farming people. I like the outdoors but I’m not a farmer for sure,” Leone said. “We would wake up at six o’clock in the morning and be there at seven o’clock picking strawberries and berries and fixing the land and just a lot of weird stuff. It was fun because it got us out and had us doing stuff. We even brought our little bluetooth speaker, played music and picked strawberries.” 

Math teacher Joseph Falger had several jobs leading up to his teaching career. When he was in high school, he started working at the small engine shop on Juniata Gap Road. Once he started college at Penn State Altoona, he worked at Mauk and Yates Funeral home. When he moved to the main campus, he worked in the computer department at Smeal College of Business. When he was in college, he worked at Ben Franklin Crafts in the Park Hills Plaza, where he met his wife. 

“My first job was at the small engine shop. I started out just helping maintain parts inventory and keeping stock on the sales floor. Then I moved in the back where I did a lot of basic maintenance on mostly lawn mowers,” Falger said. “I would say that the job really drove me to be more mechanically inclined, and I really took an interest in it because at the time when I was working there, one of the gentlemen who worked at the shop was a retired teacher from a technical school. He actually had teaching experience in that trade and would show me a lot, so it helped me learn a lot about small engines that I would’ve never known. That kind of piqued my interest in the mechanical side of things.”

Falger explains that working at Mauk and Yates Funeral Home was a “different choice” because of the nature of the business, but he just needed a job. 

“I couldn’t find anything anywhere, so I literally walked in off the street and talked to Bob Mauk who is the owner. He told me at the time I was the only person who ever walked in off the street and asked if I could have a job, and he said immediately he knew that if I was that driven he would give me a chance. I was able to work there for two years,” Falger said. “It allowed me to get a lot of interaction with people coming in and I got to see another side. I was in charge of parking cars for funeral sessions, and I did a lot of cleaning around the funeral home. On occasion I got to drive the lead car, so there were a lot of roles that I took on there. He [Bob Mauk] was very open to taking me on board with me walking in off the street like that.”

Falger knew he wanted to be a math teacher since he was in ninth grade, but feels that all of his jobs along the way contributed in some way to where he is now. 

“Working in the computer department for the Smeal College of Business, I interacted with a lot of people, and I also learned a lot of things related to technology. It is constantly evolving, but at the time there were a lot of major things being introduced which allowed me to investigate that further and try to find ways to figure out how to incorporate that into my classroom,” Falger said. “At the time when I was at Penn State, it used to be that you were actually certified to teach computer science if you went to school for mathematics 7-12, but since then the state has changed it.”

English teacher Alyssa Fasolo did freelance writing for the Altoona Mirror when she was in college.

“I always knew that I wanted to be a teacher, but I also loved to write and enjoyed my journalism classes in high school and college. I decided to minor in professional writing, which led me to getting a freelance writing position with the Altoona Mirror. I enjoyed working for the Mirror because I had the opportunity to meet and interview some wonderful community members and hear their stories,” Fasolo said. 

Besides writing for the Altoona Mirror, she also umpired softball in the summer. 

“I have been involved in sports my whole life and was interested in coaching when I was still in high school. I got involved in coaching in my summer softball league when I was a freshman in college, and from there I took an interest in umpiring. I trained with more experienced softball umpires in the area, which allowed me many opportunities to umpire recreational and tournament softball at all age levels. This has definitely helped me become a better coach because I have experienced the game from a new perspective,” Fasolo said. 

Many people start working in high school for many reasons from having spending money to saving for college or life plans. 

“I decided to start working for two reasons. The first obvious reason is just to have spending money to be able to go do things. The other reason was because my parents always felt that that would help instill more responsibility in me later on to be able to be responsible and manage money and I think that strategy actually worked,” Falger said. “I was very focused on my studies when I was in school, but I still had to juggle a job at the same time and I think it taught me a lot about time management.”

“I would say that I started working primarily to begin to save up some money for when I went to college, because I knew balancing university classes as well as working a job would be very difficult to maintain. But, I guess you can also say that I started working because I had a girlfriend in high school, and as we all know those can be just as expensive as university life,” Leone said.