This year, many students and staff have seen new faces. Well, one of the new faces you have seen is Robert Campbell, now an Algebra 1 teacher. Before he came to La Vega, he was a Navy engineer for eight years. “I love my job and I hope it gets better the more that I’m here,” he said.
Campbell was born in Salt Lake City, Utah, on January 7, 1961, and has been married for five years to Gretchel Grohoske with whom has a three-year-old girl named Cate Audrey. He attended many colleges and earned his degree in behavioral science, philosophy, and math. Some of his favorite childhood memories were seeing his mom for the first time when he was eight when he was in foster care.
"Apparently, the tragedy was so traumatic that I’m unable to recall anything prior to the age of five. However, the first time I saw my mom, when I was eight, she was pretty upset by the fact that I didn’t know who she was.”
Some other memories are going through the canyons of Utah, receiving his first acceptance letter to college, and his brother's tenth birthday party at his grandmother’s house.
After Campbell got older, he attended all Salt Lake City schools through graduation, including Lincoln Elementary, Nimbly Park, Forest Primary Children’s. In junior high, he attended Olympus, Southeast, Lincoln, and Evergreen and then Highland High School . After high school, he attended many colleges such as Westminster University in Salt Lake City, the University of Utah, Oxnard College, the University of La Verne (California), and University of the State of New York. Many things he would do in college included staying up late and having to attend night school.
Campbell joined the Navy in 1996 and attended a 52-week school named MUSE (Mobile Utilities Support Equipment) for training in physics, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, and basic math along with technical training in diesel engines and high-voltage electricity. Once he finished, he moved to MUSE in Port Hueneme, CA, a closed loop NEC (Naval Education Code) that provides in-house detailing. He also lived as a MUSE technician in La Magdalena, Sardinia, Italy, for 3 ½ years and 12 years in the Navy before retiring in September 2008.
After leaving the Navy, he moved to Lorena, Texas, and was accepted in a program called the Alternative Teacher Certification at Region 12. After four months in retirement, he was hired at Calvert ISD as a substitute for a teacher who was in a horrible car accident and stayed until May 2009. Before he was introduced to the job here, he was handed an offer to teach at Calvert, but it was 84 miles from his home and his wife was very displeased because of the distance, so he declined.
Later that month Sam Sexton interviewed Campbell, and a few weeks later, he got the news he had the job.