You could say Jeff Harris is adept at dealing with conflict. As a member of the elite Army Rangers, Harris spent the first part of his career being deployed to war zones like Panama, Iraq, and Somalia. “Army Rangers are within 18 hours of any conflict in the world. We are the first ones to show up,” Harris said.
Harris is now enjoying a second career as a teaching assistant and football coach at Solvay High School, but he is still one of the first people to be called in to resolve conflicts, and over the years he’s helped students work through everything from break-ups to bullying.
His military experiences, which spanned over two decades, taught him patience, problem-solving, and how to keep a cool head under pressure, and these are the same skills he tries to pass along to his students, he said.
“I think my military background helped me talk kids down,” said Harris, who is also president of the Solvay School Employees Union. “I built respect because students learned that I respected them, and the respect goes all the way around.”
Like many of his students, studies didn’t come easy for Harris. “I wanted to go to college to play football. I didn’t think about the study part. After my first year, I was like, ‘This is not for me.’” Harris decided to enlist in the U.S. Army in 1986. He was immediately dispatched to Fort Drum where he served as a combat engineer and helped turn the historic base into the new home for the 10th Light Infantry Division, an effort he said he is proud to have been part of.
“We weren’t even a deployable base at that time, so we did a lot of training and got a lot of schools going, and we built it up to what it is now,” said Harris. From there, he became a U.S. Army Ranger and was deployed as part of Desert Shield and Desert Storm, as well as other conflicts. He retired from the army in 2010.
Harris joined the Solvay Central School District 10 years ago, at the urging of his now-wife, Jennifer Chrysler. Chrysler was a teaching assistant in the small district outside Syracuse and thought he would enjoy working with students.
She was right.
Initially, Harris worked part-time, acting in a school resource officer's capacity and helping bring errant students back to class. The assistant principal quickly recognized that he had a natural rapport with students and brought him on full-time.
Harris knows how to right-size students’ problems. Whether he’s trying to get students to return to class or finish their homework, Harris places a premium on putting things in perspective. “Students need to hear that no matter how bad a day it is, they’re going to get through it,” he said. “I tell them that most of these things, they are temporary troubles, and in four years, they won’t even remember them.”
Harris also advises students to avoid power struggles and tug-of-wars with their classmates. “I always tell them, ‘Don’t pick up the rope.’” He also advises them to seek help from adults on the big issues. Guidance like this has helped many students over the years.
“My biggest joy is seeing a freshman kid who was in trouble all the time, walking across the stage at graduation,” Harris said. “I’ve now been here long enough now that I’m seeing kids graduate from college, and that’s very rewarding.”
We thank all veterans especially NYSUT members who have served.