This week’s Project 100+ memory comes from James Reina. He was born in Dearborn, Michigan.  At age two, his family moved to New Jersey. They lived in three different communities in northern New Jersey. James attended public schools and graduated from Governor Livingston High School in Berkeley Heights in 1988.  His father worked for AT&T where he did a variety of jobs over the years, working in New York City at first and, later, at Basking Ridge. When he retired, he oversaw the division that negotiated the billing contracts for the company. James’s mother was a homemaker, but, once James was a bit older, she went back to college. James thinks this example made an impact on him. She finished her bachelor’s degree in interior design at Kean University and worked in that field subsequently. After graduating from high school, he attended Morris County College, where he played baseball. After he got hurt and couldn’t play baseball, he took a break from college and worked in sales for eight years. He believes that those years later proved very helpful to him in his current role as an administrator. In sales, James argues that it is important to be able to really listen to people, which is also important if you want to lead others.  He left sales when he had an opportunity to move to southern New Jersey and return to college. He enrolled at Rowan in the Fall of 1998. He graduated three years later with degrees in history and secondary education. In September 2001, he got his first job, teaching social studies at Oakcrest High School. He soon entered the master’s program in School Leadership at Rowan.  Right after finishing that degree in 2005 and after four years of teaching and coaching baseball and soccer, he became a Vice Principal at Oakcrest. In 2009, the district opened a new high school, Cedar Creek. They named James the first Principal. For one year, before the school opened in 2010, he focused on getting the school ready to open. He did everything from choosing the furniture to hiring the staff to picking out the color of the carpets.  After six years, he transferred back to Oakcrest High School to serve as principal. He did so because Oakcrest was struggling, having had three principals in four years. Morale was low, and the school needed an experienced principal.  He volunteered to do this work because he knew that he could be of help to both the students and the faculty in this situation. He served there for four years, doing his best to turn things around. The Board of Education liked what he had done. In 2020, they named him the Superintendent of the Greater Egg Harbor Regional School District, effective January 1, 2021.

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When I decided to return to college, Rowan was automatic due to their reputation for teacher preparation. I wanted a job teaching in southern New Jersey, and I felt Rowan gave me the best chance at finding that job. I chose history. Not only was it my favorite subject in high school, I continued to read history after I left college. I felt that knowing history gave me a way to have interesting and deep conversations with anyone, anywhere, anytime.  I also knew that I wanted to coach. I had played seven seasons of sports in high school, all for Bill Howard, who was both my baseball and soccer coach. I knew from this experience that a coach could have a powerful and profound experience on young people.

From my early days at Rowan, I became very impressed with the history faculty at Rowan. Not only did they have well-prepared lectures and content, they were also so deeply knowledgeable about their fields. They could answer an amazing range of questions. Even when they might not have known the exact answer, they could connect it to something that they did know that was relevant; that model was so important to experience for a future teacher.

Another thing that I remember is how so many of the faculty could connect their subjects to their own personal experiences. I remember Scott Morschauser talking about his time digging in Egypt. I remember you talking about how the South remembered the Civil War from your own experience growing up in Texas and living later in Georgia and Virginia. I remember Cory Blake discussing her travels in the Middle East.

I took four or five classes with Dr. Blake, including “Women in Islam” and the “Modern Middle East.”  They were absolutely pivotal to my growth and development as a student and, later, as a teacher. I was one week into my very first teaching job when 9/11 took place. Because of my training at Rowan, I was the most knowledgeable person in the Social Studies Department about the history of the modern Middle East. I became a resource for my fellow teachers and for our students due to this knowledge. I remember that before 9/11, world history was taught in chronological order, with Islam coming last. I began to teach the three Abrahamic religions at the same time, going over how the three religions connect.  This new approach was one that my colleagues began to follow. I still have a deep bond with the students that I had on that Tuesday.  I get texts from several of them regularly, often on 9/11. I ended up hiring a couple of them to work for me. 

In addition to Dr. Blake, I loved Scott Morschauser, one of the most brilliant people that I ever met.  He could put 5,000 years of events into a conversation in a way that was just stunning.  I took him for “Ancient Mediterranean World” and “Ancient Egypt.”  If you put him in front of a modern audience of professional educators, they would give him failing marks as a teacher because he was very old school. I remember that he had these old, yellow legal pads. His tools were a marker and a white board. Yet, he was so dynamic and passionate. It was a true pleasure to have him as a professor. 

Your class on the “Civil War and Reconstruction” was also very important to me. Your ability to share how different parts of the country remembered this history differently resonated with what I was learning in my education classes. It proved very helpful later when I was in the classroom myself and navigating similar but different conflicting interpretations of the past. I had you in your first semester, and you invited the entire class over to your house at the end of the semester for an end-of-the-course social. That taught me the importance of relationship building with students, and I was reminded of it when you emailed me twenty-five years after that class for this project. I didn’t hesitate to respond because of the relationship you forged with me all these years earlier. 

There were many other faculty members that helped me, even though I can’t now recall their names as easily as I would like. Professor Myers in the College of Education was pivotal in helping me understand the value of conversation-based teaching. He helped me understand how valuable it was to craft good questions, and he gave great advice for crafting those questions.

I was older than most of the other students, and I didn’t get as involved in extra-curricular activities.  I was working, commuting, and busy outside of the classroom. The faculty understood this. On a couple of occasions when my life prevented me from being able to go to class, I would inform the faculty. When I did, they understood and made me feel supported as I finished my degree while doing all these other things.

I spent six years at Rowan, three years getting my undergraduate degree and three more getting my master’s degree. Those six years taught me to continually assess myself as an educator. It gave me good examples to emulate and to gauge my own progress and growth.  Moreover, it was everything I had hoped for in terms of networking. Not only did I get a job as soon as I graduated, it has long been hard for me to walk into an education meeting in southern New Jersey and not run into someone with whom I had a class in those six years.

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This is part of the Department of History’s “Project 100+,” an ongoing collection of memories by Glassboro State College and Rowan University alumni and staff that began as part of the celebration of the 100^th anniversary of the founding of Glassboro Normal School, later Glassboro State College, and now Rowan University. Due to interest in the project, the number of interviewees continues to grow. Thanks to Laurie Lahey for helping proofread and edit the final versions. Email carrigan@rowan.edu with questions or corrections. You can find the Link to all of the Project 100 and Project 100+ entries on the Web: https://chss.rowan.edu/departments/history/alumni_all/