I currently am a Teacher 4 at Trumbull Correctional. I have served as a teacher at Trumbull
Correctional for 4 years. At present I teach ABE, PreHSE and HSE. I also work with the High School
Options students at Trumbull Correctional and serve as the Technology Liaison. I hold a Bachelor’s of Arts in Integrated Social Studies from Malone University and a 7-12 Integrated Social Studies License. I earned a Master’s Degree from Ashland University In Educational Administration and hold a Principal’s License covering grades 4 through 12. In the winter of 2023, I added to my professional certifications by becoming a licensed Mild-to-Moderate K through 12 Intervention Specialist. Before becoming a Correctional Educator, I served 13 years in a traditional public school as a Social Studies teacher at both the middle and high school grade levels. I also coached football and baseball.
Personally, I am happily married to my loving and supporting wife Diane. Together we have
been blessed with three children Adelina, Camden, and Levi. I am an active member of Holy Cross Church, serve as a Cub Scout Leader and enjoy exploring new places with my family.
I appreciate the challenges of being a correctional educator. I am very fortunate to be a
member of the ODRC team. It is very rewarding knowing we all share a common purpose of installing hope in the lives of the men and woman we are responsible for. Helping our students better themselves through education is our mission as they pursue the journey to rehabilitation. We all play a vital part making Ohio a safer place for all people by reducing recidivism through education.
I would like to give a special thank you the entire Education Department at Trumbull
Correctional. It is a great team to be apart of and makes our institution a special place to work at every day.
One of my favorite things about my work is that I seldom take it home with me. I have a long commute, and I leave as much stress and frustration along the road as I can, and I get home ready to focus on home. I have a son who will be 20yrs old in December, and I cannot believe how fast he has grown up. (And he has literally grown up because he towers over me, and it is not OK.) I’ve been desperately in love with my boyfriend for almost 15 years, and we have a beautiful home in a very small town in Knox county. I hike and run when the weather is good, and go to the gym when the weather isn’t good. I make scrapbooks, I love to cook and bake, and I write fiction. I have published 3 books on Amazon.
I fell in love with teaching the first time I ever stood in front of a classroom as a substitute teacher. People laugh when I say there was a “moment,” but there really was. The clouds parted, angels wept and harps played, and I knew what I was meant to be doing. Eighteen years later, I am just as certain that I belong in front of a classroom. Almost 14 years ago, I answered an ad in a newspaper for a substitute teacher in a juvenile facility, and I knew on that very first day that I was being called to teach an incarcerated population. I genuinely love my work, and I look forward to doing it every day. I love the challenge of finding just the right thing to reach that sullen student in the back of the room determined to not learn anything. I love seeing the spark of understanding in that student who thought he would never understand, and I love the overall positive and fun atmosphere of my classroom. I can’t imagine ever doing anything else.
I grew up in a household in Delaware, Ohio, the oldest of three children where I was not asked IF I was going to college, I was asked WHERE I was going to college. School was always very easy for me, and I didn’t have to study or apply myself much at all until I entered college. After two different colleges and three different majors, I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life.
I have always loved helping people. I began babysitting at the age of 8 years old for a music professor at Ohio Wesleyan University while she gave private voice lessons. Her children would come to my parents’ house while my mom was cooking dinner, so I was not alone with the kids, but I was the one who got paid to watch the children. At the age of 10, I began teaching swim lessons assisting older lifeguards with their classes and being the demonstrator for all swim strokes, dives, and treading kicks. I then became a youth group counselor and loved working with middle school aged children. It was then that one of the counselors said, “With all the swim lesson teaching and counseling skills you have, have you ever thought about going into education?” So that’s what I did, and it was one of the best choices I have ever made.
I have always believed that all students CAN learn…in and out of the swimming pool. All students must be presented with opportunities to learn, regardless of their diverse backgrounds and teachers have an unspoken moral obligation to bring these opportunities to their students. Educators are the agents of change within the world and are responsible for finding the ways that each student learns best because our students do not fit into a one-size-fits-all mold.
I have now been teaching for over 25 years between corrections and public schools and I am a
correctional educator because this is where I choose to be, and this is what I choose to do. My first teaching job was in an affluent school district where I didn’t feel effective as a teacher because I couldn’t offer the students anything that wasn't already available. Shortly after that, I worked in corrections for the first time in the late 1990s. I had a pregnant teenage student tell me, “Miss B, if I had had a teacher like you when I was in Columbus City Schools (CCS), I might not have ended up here.” Although I liked my correctional job, I was getting married and having a child so I thought, “I am going to teach in Columbus City Schools like my student suggested so I can have summers off with my kid(s); maybe I can make a difference there.” While I worked for CCS, I taught all grades except fourth grade. I was teaching students whose parents I may have previously taught, but I actually found out at a family Thanksgiving function at the school where I was teaching that I taught PreGED to a grandparent of one of my second grade students. This grandma had been locked up at Franklin Pre-Release Center when I was there which
made me realize during that encounter that an elementary school teacher I was not! The more time I spent in CCS, the more I missed teaching adults in the correctional system. I wanted to teach where I felt I was a more effective teacher than I had ever been and that was in corrections. I love the GED curriculum and I tell my students that I feel like Laura Ingalls Wilder because I am a one-room schoolhouse that teaches everything from phonics to balancing chemical equations. After all of these years, I am a correctional educator because this is where I belong!
In my spare time, I take classes getting a masters in Curriculum and Teaching. I enjoy spending time with my husband and my 4 children at the baseball or football field or just hanging out, spending quality time together. I enjoy working out, listening to music, and catching up with friends, old and new!
Tim McHam is an educator from Belmont Correctional institute. While being a caring husband and father of three, he is dedicated in his role of teaching and is passionate about helping his students succeed in the classroom to further give them a chance outside of the system.
Tim is a graduate of Akron University Education class of 2003. During 9 ½ years of teaching at Belmont (BeCI) Tim McHam has been primarily a PreGED educator and has also taught GED, ABE. His main focus is on creating diverse educational opportunities using his Tracker System, Chromebooks, and traditional classroom teaching. He holds his students to a standard, while holding himself to a high standard in how he reaches the students while in the education department. Tim believes in celebrating success, maintaining a sense of humor, keeping lessons simple and easy to process and showing real world applications when possible, so as to encourage long-term retention. Before working at Belmont, Tim’s prior jobs included being a Resident Assistant in college, manufacturing, warehouse, and construction. His interest includes gardening, building/fabricating, sports, fishing, family, helping others, church, and he really enjoys chopping firewood.
I grew up in a small town in Michigan, and ever since I can remember, construction has
been a part of my life. My dad owned his own residential construction company and as a
child, I used to go with him to his jobs and watch him work. As soon as I was able, I
began to work with him.
I have always been a hard worker when it comes to physical jobs, but I was not always a
great student. I struggled in school, and as a result, I became the class clown - every
teacher’s nightmare. I was looking for some structure in my life, and I found it in 1994
when I was 19 years old and enlisted in the United States Marine Corps.
After my time in the Marine Corps, I spent the next 11 years working in the commercial
construction industry, working my way up from an iron worker, to a foreman, to a
superintendent. In 2004, while I was supervising the construction of a new infirmary
building at the ORW, I learned that they were hiring a teacher for the new construction
technology program, and at my wife’s urging, I decided to apply. When I took the job, I
was still skeptical of whether I could really be a good teacher.
Since that day, almost 20 years ago, I made it my mission to reach students, like me, who
possibly struggled academically but had a desire to learn a new skill and find meaningful
employment. I took my work experience in the field, and I found a way to mimic it in the
classroom. I continue to seek new ways to provide certifications and trainings in the
newest equipment and technology. The opportunities that I provide for my students have
proven to be life altering. I am proud of my program, and proud of its results. The
partnerships that I have been able to forge with community resources are valuable to me
and my students. I believe it is important to instill a good work ethic and I teach my
students to stand behind their work, cooperate as a team, and become valuable
employees.
In my spare time, I love to travel and spend time with my wife and 3 kids. My oldest son
followed in my footsteps and joined the USMC, my second son is a computer science
engineering major at the University of Cincinnati and is naturally a gifted student
(obviously, he didn’t get that from me). My daughter is a freshman in high school and I
try to get to every one of her soccer and wrestling matches that I can to be her biggest
supporter. I also enjoy fishing, hiking, and being outdoors in general. But I also LOVE
air conditioning.