‘Something Bigger Than Myself’

From military medic to empowering educator, Roy Adams finds his purpose in serving others By Brooklyn Chillemi

Only a few of Roy Adams’ (M18) high school students know he used to jump out of airplanes.

Adams remembers the yelling, whooping and hollering of his fellow soldiers, which he could barely hear over the rushing wind as the airplane doors opened 900 feet above the ground. He can still picture the green light next to the door and the jump master’s voice barking, “Go, go, go” until it was Adams’ turn to jump out into the chaos. He recalls, once his parachute was open, the moment of serenity – when everything went quiet – before it was time to land and serve those who were injured on the field.

But students at McKay High School in Salem, Oregon, know a different side of Adams.

To them, he’s simply “Mr. Adams” who has taught business and marketing classes for eight years. One high school senior experienced their first airplane ride with Adams while traveling to a student business competition, but there was, of course, no jumping. Mainly, students see Adams as a mentor who wants them to succeed.

Teaching Through Service

When Adams’ time in the military came to a close in 2014, he didn’t immediately feel the call to teach. He used his GI Bill benefits to earn a master’s degree in organizational leadership, which he planned on using for a career in business.

After completing his degree, he tried various job opportunities, but none of them were fulfilling. He missed serving others like he had in the military.

“I knew to be fulfilled in my work, I had to do something that was bigger than myself,” Adams says.

That sense of service drew him to education. In 2017, he enrolled in the Master of Arts in Teaching program at George Fox. Soon after enrolling, he learned he could earn a Career and Technical Education teaching license quickly based on his previous master’s degree and experience in the business world. As a result, he was offered a position at McKay High School and began to teach.

“What I love most about teaching is building a trusting relationship with students and getting them to open up to what I’m teaching about success, goals and discipline,” Adams says. “My goal is that they will learn from my mistakes and have an easier life so that they won’t have to experience some of the struggles that I’ve gone through.”

Adams says his discipline comes from his time as a combat medic, but he hopes to teach students a similar sense of discipline in the classroom – and that happens one relationship at a time.

Building Confidence, Breaking the Cycle

One of the biggest projects in Adams’ Marketing and Business Management class is the Scot Shop, a student-run store inside the school named after its mascot. Students run the store, developing skills in product creation, cost analysis, promotion and marketing.

These skills are valuable, but more importantly, Adams hopes projects like these build confidence.

“Unless students are confident in themselves and willing to put themselves out there to apply the learning, then what I teach in content is not as important,” he says.

A number of students at McKay come from socioeconomic backgrounds that can create barriers to their success. As a Title I school, it has a 100% free or reduced lunch and breakfast program. Many students work in addition to attending school to help provide for their families.

With challenges like these, it can be difficult for some students to remain consistent and disciplined in their classwork. But Adams counters this mentality with a simple question: “Why not be your best?”

“No student has been able to answer that yet,” he says. “I think there really isn’t a good answer.”

And if Adams expects students to be consistent and disciplined, he knows that they’ll expect the same from him. “I had one student who wrote me a note saying that I was the reason she kept showing up,” he says. “So me showing up was the reason she would show up.”

Ultimately, he hopes his business classes will teach his students skills that allow them to accumulate generational financial stability.

“The reason I stay is for them,” Adams says when asked if he ever considered moving to a school with more resources. “I love talking with students about personal finance and how they’re spending their money – they could be the one to turn around a family cycle.”

New Job, Same Goal

Looking forward, Adams hopes to make an even bigger impact by becoming a high school principal, and he’s back at George Fox being equipped to do just that in the university’s Master of Education program, which he’ll complete in August.

“Right now, I affect the lives of about 300 students who come through my door each year,” he says. “But as a principal, I can affect a lot more lives on a larger scale through the policies I make.”

“I love the challenges that we face here. I love connecting with students and getting them to wake up and start investing in themselves and investing in their future.”

He’ll soon begin this new journey by applying for assistant principal positions in the area. If he has his way, Adams will end up at McKay – or a school just like it.

“I think I would be less satisfied in a school with a higher socioeconomic student population,” he says. ”We have our challenges at McKay, but I love the challenges that we face here. I love connecting with students and getting them to wake up and start investing in themselves and investing in their future. That’s what I find rewarding.”

Watch a video with more of Roy’s story at
georgefox.edu/RoyAdams