Mark Thompson, department chair for Special Ed at McLean, enjoys the work he’s been doing, in one capacity or another, for almost 35 years. Still, he’s not sure he’s 100% sold on the phrase at the heart of his job title.
“We say Special Ed, or Special Needs,” Mr. Thompson told our Work Study Word staff during a group interview, “but we could give every single person on earth a title based on something. This world needs everybody, and everybody’s just as important as everybody else.”
Mr. Thompson fielded a spirited array of student questions, from where was he born (Yokohama, Japan, in 1961) to what’s his favorite restaurant (Michael Jordan’s Steakhouse) to does he like pets (yes, especially dogs). But he seemed most engaged talking about the work he does on students’ behalf regular day to regular day. After all, he pointed out with a grin, his 16 years at McLean mean he’s been walking through this building longer than members of its freshman class have been alive.
That birth in Japan was a function of his father’s work in the United States Coast Guard. As a “military brat,” he moved every three years for big pieces of his life. Most of the places weren’t as exotic, however – New Jersey, Miami, New London, Conn. (home of the Coast Guard Academy) and finally several places in Virginia. Mr. Thompson earned his bachelor’s degree at Washington & Lee, following that with a master’s from Johns Hopkins.
If his favorite part of McLean life is working with students, whether in his administrative capacity or as a classroom teacher, he also appreciates the opportunity to get to know parents. This he does a bit better and more often than most Regular Ed teachers, who often see mothers and fathers only once a year on Parents Night. If then.
Mr. Thompson’s initial work in schools was as an “adaptive behavior” specialist, which he describes as teachings kids appropriate social skills and how to interact with others. Along the way, he developed an understanding of what many of the challenges of his students today are, whether in the classes he teaches (math, life skills, sometimes U.S. and Virginia history, government) or in the Work Study workplace. Life skills is probably his favorite subject to teach, he says, because it can take in almost anything he or his students are interested in on any given day.
“It’s a rich curriculum,” he says.
Away from his life at McLean, Mr. Thompson shares a home in Loudon County (in South Riding, to be precise) with his wife Stacie – seen in the photo with him above – and 13-year-old son Jack, who will himself be starting high school near their home next fall. The department chair enjoys playing golf and coaching kids sports, especially basketball, baseball and lacrosse, and, for a much-needed escape, reading action adventure fiction by Clive Cussler and other authors like him.
Mr. Thompson was asked to serve as McLean’s Special Ed department chair with the retirement of Rita Kuntz. With his brand of humor the students and teachers know well, he downplays his own knowledge of many things and emphasizes the tricks he’s learned for successful living over the decades. It’s a process with a single, simple goal, really: helping students.
“I hope they tell me their problems,” he says. “I don’t know all the answers, but I almost always know who to ask. I think I’ve made a career of knowing who to ask.”
When one of our students asked Mr. Thompson what he does to inspire kids at McLean, he stopped, pondered, and said he’d never actually been asked that or thought about it specifically before.
“I let the students know that pretty much anything you want to do, if you put your mind to it, you can probably make it work,” he says. “What I think I do well is create opportunity. I don’t shut doors. This world needs workers, so be the best worker you can be. One of my favorite sayings is: All ships are safe in the harbor, but that’s not what ships are for.”
THE WORK STUDY WORD 