PHS Spotlight Chief Killian

   Chief Killian currently runs the NJ program at Parlier High School. She was in the Navy for 20 years. She has been working here for 4 years. Previous to working at PHS she was working in hospitals around the area, she was an admin officer because her degree is in HR. She stated “ I never planned on being a teacher.” When asked why she started working here she said that she was having a really bad day at work because the hospital would not give family leave to one of her employees. That employee’s father had cancer (he sadly passed away that same week). She said “ I didn’t know how we could not take care of our employees but expected them to take care of the place.” She looked up jobs and PHS was the only school offering a job as an NJ teacher. Two weeks later she was teaching her first class.

“You guys are our future” is why she believes that educating kids is important. She also believes that students shouldn’t just learn the core skills for example math, english, science ect.., but to actually learn life skills that will ultimately help them in the real world. To the current seniors she would like to say “ It’s going to get real in a couple of months and so stay confident, stay grounded, never expect no for an answer especially if you have a dream.”

Chief Killian hopes to have made positive impacts to this school. “A lot of my kids come back to me and tell me that if it wasn’t for me that they wouldn’t be doing what they are doing in the civilian world now.” She has mostly made a lot of important impacts in her students’ lives.  For example she has a former student who is currently on a 500k scholarship at San Diego University. “She has clearly made it and her parents clearly made it known to me that she would not have that scholarship if it wasn’t for me” she states. She goes on to explain that she had to get a note from the Vice President of the United States of America to get her that scholarship and her student would have been too scared to have actually contacted the Vice President because she never thought that someone from Parlier would actually get a nomination from the Vice President. Chief Killian supported, encouraged, and gave her the confidence to do it and she got the scholarship.

All teachers have a favorite time of the school day. Most teachers would say lunch or break but not Chief Killian. Her favorite time of the school day is all of it ! She jokingly says “ That I always say that Ihave like one certain period but actually all of them are my favorite.”

Chief Killian was quite the opposite of the person she is now then when she was in high school. “I was actually part of the popular group, I was the kid who played a lot of sports, I was also the kid who made fun of the NJ students, and I did not want to be a teacher. I was actually the kid who would ditch classes.” she admits. Ironic isn’t it from ditching class and making fun of NJ kids to becoming a teacher for NJ. She also adds that she is very surprised at where she is today and that some of her old high school teachers are also very surprised that she is a teacher now.  

Chief Killian grew up in L.A. The military brought her husband here and she was “stuck here” while her husband moved away and went to work for amazon. If she wasn’t a teacher she would continue working in the military as a recruiter for HR in her normal career field.

The most important thing to know about Chief Killian is to “Not Judge a book by its cover.” That very well applies to Chief Killian; most people would think coming from her Navy background that she would be mean but that is not the case at all. She also suffers from the dumb blond sterotype, most people when they first look at her thinks that she is not educated. They assume that since she was in the military that she was not bright enough to get into a college or university. Little do they know that she is currently in a doctoral program getting her PHD.  

Chief Killians favorite superhero is Batman. She says that “ I don’t really know why, it was kinda like a recruiting thing when I was recruiting because of the kryptonite, and we used to make jokes about it.”