{"id":44297,"date":"2017-02-28T09:28:34","date_gmt":"2017-02-28T14:28:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/?p=44297"},"modified":"2022-09-28T14:14:14","modified_gmt":"2022-09-28T18:14:14","slug":"volcanic-voyage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/2017\/02\/28\/volcanic-voyage\/","title":{"rendered":"Volcanic voyage"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/a>

After earning his bachelor\u2019s degree in integrated language arts and master\u2019s in education from Wright State, Jamaica Siroky teaches at Thurgood Marshall STEM High School in Dayton.<\/p><\/div>\n

The cataclysmic 1991 eruption of the Mount Pinatubo volcano in the Philippines changed the course of his life.<\/p>\n

The second largest volcanic eruption of the 20th century created avalanches of hot ash and gas, giant mudflows and a cloud of volcanic ash hundreds of miles wide. It killed hundreds of people, left 100,000 homeless and sent 1-year-old Jamaica Siroky and his family seeking refuge in the United States, where they settled in South Carolina.<\/p>\n

Today, the 27-year-old Wright State University alumnus teaches literature, writing and public speaking at Thurgood Marshall STEM High School in Dayton. He founded a successful school poetry club, has steered students into community service and is now poised to pursue an advanced degree at Harvard University.<\/p>\n

\u201cI come from a background of farmers, fisherman and honest-to-goodness hard-working people,\u201d said Siroky. \u201cThose values have always been ingrained in me ever since I can remember.\u201d<\/p>\n

Siroky\u2019s mother emphasized the importance of education and taught her son to read at a very young age.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy mom works a factory job now and has done that a lot for most of her life in America,\u201d he said. \u201cShe has definitely worked herself to the grind for her kids. But it became our own individual responsibilities to always do more and be more than what she ever could be because of circumstance. So I did.\u201d<\/p>\n

Siroky got his first taste of drama and theater in the eighth grade after moving to Dayton. He asked his mother to sew him a King George costume so he could get extra credit during a class debate on the American Revolution.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had a blast pretending to be royalty,\u201d he said. \u201cFrom there, I began to check out plays.\u201d<\/p>\n

Siroky attended Wayne High School. He graduated fifth in his class, with a 4.3 GPA.<\/p>\n

\u201cI always knew how to find and attract people who aligned with my own deterministic attitude, compassion and wanted something more in life and not just being complacent,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

After graduation, Siroky was working to help his family pay bills and tried to convince his mother to let him take a year off to save for college.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor those who don\u2019t really make enough \u2014 or attempt to make it paycheck to paycheck \u2014 not having enough to do something is just a constant reminder,\u201d he said, \u201cso I wanted to have some semblance of stability before embarking on college. But my mom told me \u2018absolutely not\u2019 \u2014 I was going to college whether I liked it or not.\u201d<\/p>\n

So Siroky enrolled at Wright State, becoming a first-generation college student. He earned his bachelor\u2019s degree in integrated language arts<\/a> in 2011 and his master\u2019s in education<\/a> in 2012.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had some amazing professors at Wright State, particularly in the English department,\u201d he said. \u201cThey don\u2019t know it, but they affected me in such a way that I couldn\u2019t help but fall more in love with English and education than I already had.\u201d<\/p>\n

Because of his creative teaching style, Siroky had a bumpy start at his first two student-teaching jobs, but was ultimately hired at Thurgood Marshall STEM High School.<\/p>\n

\u201cThurgood gave me an opportunity to rebuild my confidence and re-learn why I fell in love with teaching in the first place,\u201d he said. \u201cThe teachers make it a point to bring more minority voices into the students\u2019 reading, making sure there is representation and access. I don\u2019t think you will find a Dayton public school more devoted to the consciousness and care of its children than Thurgood.\u201d<\/p>\n

Siroky teaches advanced language and composition, British literature, multicultural studies, research writing, public speaking and interpersonal communication. He sometimes dresses as characters in literature and poetry such as Beowulf to better engage his students.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey want to act out stuff with me too as they get transported into my world of English lit and language,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Siroky also founded the school poetry club and entered it into poetry slams, competitions in which poets read or recite original work.<\/p>\n

\u201cI trained my students by introducing them to various genres, doing my own pieces in front of them or being silly and spitting lines out on a whim,\u201d he said. \u201cI was a facilitator\/mentor, but I also became quite the learner. We would end up mimicking each other for a different approach until we found the nuances we liked about what each style had to offer.\u201d<\/p>\n

This past year, Thurgood Marshall won the district poetry slam as a school.<\/p>\n

\u201cPoetry slams teach students about their own voices,\u201d he said. \u201cThey slowly piece together the ways in which words fit and flow and the kind of effect their diction and syntax can have on a person\u2019s being. That\u2019s pretty powerful stuff \u2014 not only for the performer, but the audience as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

Siroky has also gotten his students involved in service-learning, requiring it as part of a senior project.<\/p>\n

\u201cCommunity-building is of the utmost importance, but it takes students wanting to connect and wanting to work for that kind of kinship to foster a sense of growth and belonging that makes them want to help,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Some students mentored incoming freshmen, others read to pupils in nearby schools, and others helped start community gardens.<\/p>\n

Siroky is also site coordinator for the National Conference for Community and Justice of Greater Dayton, a nonprofit devoted to fighting bias and bigotry, especially in education.<\/p>\n

He soon plans to move to Boston and has applied to Harvard University\u2019s Ph.D. program in education with a concentration in cultures, institutions and society. He has one more test to take for admittance.<\/p>\n

Siroky credits much of his success to his days at Wright State.<\/p>\n

\u201cWright State professors care enough to impart what they know, challenge you to do more than what you think you\u2019re capable of \u2014 mainly because they are paying attention to you \u2014 and just be people before they are professors,\u201d he said. \u201cI am amazed at our faculty and always proud to say I am an alum of this place.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After earning bachelor\u2019s and master\u2019s degrees from Wright State, Jamaica Siroky teaches at Thurgood Marshall STEM High School in Dayton. Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":44299,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[722,733,4299,2104,2060,744,725,4863,715],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44297","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academics","category-alumni","category-alumni-profile","category-teacher-education","category-graduate","category-education-human-services","category-home-news-sidebar","category-humanities-and-cultural-studies","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44297","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44297"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44297\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44307,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44297\/revisions\/44307"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44299"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}