Class of Fall 2024: CEHHS graduate Jesse Whitman

Education master's student and Fall '24 graduate Jesse Whitman has always been drawn to people and places that don't match his own background. In fact, when he graduated from his small-town, southwest Michigan high school in 2007, he didn't apply to a single in-state university - just to guarantee that he'd land somewhere unfamiliar. As it turned out, Miami University in Oxford, Ohio wasn't exactly exotic, but it was hard to turn down a Division I track scholarship. Whitman's major at Miami, however, did stretch his horizons. He majored in history, with a concentration in Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies. He even learned Arabic. "I just have always had this desire to learn about other cultures, and that seemed about as different from my own background as you could get," he says.

Whitman loved his time at Miami, but he jokes now that his choice of major may have complicated his employment prospects - especially given he graduated in 2011, when the U.S. economy was still recovering from the Great Recession. So fresh out of college, and struggling to find work in his field, he decided to completely switch gears. He says he joined the Navy in small part because his grandfather had served in the Navy, and in large part because he had a lot of student loan debt and the Navy has a generous loan repayment program. When he enlisted, he scored high on the ASVAB exam, a sort of SAT for the military, which put him on track to train to become a "nuke" - technical staff who maintain the electrical systems on the Navy's nuclear-powered submarines and aircraft carriers. The intense training lasted 18 months, after which Whitman was assigned to the Harry S. Truman, an aircraft carrier based in Norfolk, Virginia, where he worked on operations and maintenance of the nuclear propulsion plant's high-voltage electrical system.

Whitman says his time in the Navy shaped him in several important ways. The high-stakes environment of operating a nuclear-powered electrical system taught him a lot about the importance of owning your work. And it enabled him to see the world: during his time in the Navy, he went to Dubai, Croatia, Crete and Bahrain. Most importantly, he says, it taught him a lot about people - and specifically, about who Americans really are, deep down, when the issues that divide us aren't front and center. "I mean, when you're doing your shift and you're trying to stay awake at 2 a.m. and you're not looking at your equipment, what are you doing? You're learning about the person sitting next to you, what they believe in, what they enjoyed about the recent port call," he says. "The Navy takes a really big sample of America. It's maybe a better representation of what America really is - or could be. It's the melting pot. It's people who have really different backgrounds and beliefs, but there is this expectation that we're all going to work together regardless of our beliefs because we all have this greater mission we're contributing to. After being in the Navy, I'm confident I could work with anyone."

Whitman says the reason he left the Navy was pretty simple: His daughter was born, and his demanding work schedule, which required him to be out to sea for weeks at a time, meant he was missing too many of her "firsts." He decided not to renew his contract and to head back to school, making what seemed like a logical choice. He enrolled in UM-Dearborn's electrical engineering program, where he says the stunning new Engineering Lab Buildingwas a big draw. But three semesters in, he simply wasn't feeling it. "I was doing well academically, but it wasn't 'sparking joy' - to quote Marie Kondo," he says, smiling. "So I tried to think back to the last time I felt a lot of job satisfaction, and it was teaching."

In the Navy, it turned out, Whitman got to do quite a bit of teaching, most often about technical subjects having to do with the ship's electrical systems. Other times, it was more informal, like the mentorship that came with looking out for younger members of his team. "Some of them were 18 years old, and the Navy can throw a lot of money at you, so it's important to take care of your finances," he says. "They had questions about how to buy a car or buy a house, and I was a little older, so I could help them with that stuff. It felt good to be able to impact their lives in a really practical way." Whitman decided to cut his losses in his engineering program and switch to a Master's of Education. The vibe shift for him was immediate. He says it felt incredible to suddenly be around a group of super positive people who were all committed to serving a greater good - not totally unlike the environment he'd found in the Navy, but it was a better fit for who he'd become.

Whitman says it feels pretty amazing to be bringing this chapter of his life to a close - which, of course, is really just the beginning of a new chapter. In particular, he feels fortunate to have had the time and space to "find my footing as a 35-year-old man," something he says was only an option because of his wife's support. And his student teaching experience this past semester has only reinforced the feeling that he's made a good choice. In particular, he's enjoyed all the experimentation it's forced him to do. On his very first day, for example, when he bored the first two periods of sixth-grade geography students with a prepared lecture on the fundamentals of maps, he wasted no time pivoting. During the lunch hour, he quizzed his supervising teacher, who gave him some sage advice about the attention spans of 11-year-olds that he's still using. Developmentally, Whitman says, kids that age are still learning how to digest large "blocks" of information. So this semester, he learned to mix in things like YouTube videos and activities that ask the kids to weigh in with their takes on things. "Luckily, I'm at the age where it's easy for me to accept that I don't know everything," Whitman says. "I'm new to this, so working with teachers that have been at this for 20 years - of course, they're going to be better at it than me. Why wouldn't I try out their advice? Even they're still trying out new things. You see that teaching really is going to be a lifelong learning experience."

In fact, Whitman's student teaching experience at his Oak Park middle school has been so enjoyable, he's now thinking his preferred first job might be something like teaching 7th grade - even though he originally envisioned himself as a high school social studies teacher. "With all things, I try to just embrace the opportunity you find yourself with," he says. "I kind of think of it like being in a maze. How do you know you're going the wrong direction? You hit the wall and turn around. That's happened to me a few times in life. But now I'm finding that I might want to do middle school because I gave it a chance. The path in front of me still feels open."

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Story by Lou Blouin

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