About Mike Rhamy

I grew up in Wayne County Ohio on our family farm. My father was also also a high school principal in the area. Growing up in a farming and education family started my love of learning in so many different areas. Through the running of the farm, I quickly gained a love (and need) to understand how things work. When time is short, you don't always have time to call for help when something stops working. Many times on the farm we started taking things apart to fix things out of necessity, but also to learn how they work. I soon found myself asking how most of the things worked and learned that the more I understood how things work, the more effectively I could use those tools. This has been one of my most used and valued personal strengths.

Many years have passed since that time, but now I can see the benefits of those lessons. I am always questioning how things work and can they be made better. I don't do that with farm equipment anymore, but now I use the same principles to guide me in my professional life. Doing things a certain way just because "that is the way we always have done it" doesn't always just not make sense, sometimes it is harder and takes longer. There is a definite place in all organizations for honoring the things we value, but with a changing world with changing resources, we must not become to fixed in our ways. When we look for ways to constantly improve, we bring value to the organization and the people in the organization.

Using my understanding of how things work, I specialize in using technology to simplify, reduce time, and increase accuracy in an educational setting. I spear-headed the use of ad-hoc functionality in Infinite Campus to automate our attendance calls, create automated discipline letters, email parents of missing and failing grades, monitor the graduation requirements of our students, and to make data driven educational decisions. I have implemented the daily use of google for both our students and teachers in signing up for the use of the library. I also have introduced the use of google forms to monitor student progress. We will be using this for our special education department for gathering and analyzing behavioral data of our students with special needs in the following year.

Today I live back on that same family farm that I grew up on. Now I am lucky enough to be joined by my loving and supportive wife, our daughter, and our every loving and annoying dog. I get to enjoy learning how to make Minecraft worlds, spending time with my family, enjoying good music, and relaxing in the country setting. I also enjoy volunteering in my community and have helped with rebuilding homes ruined in flooding, being an ABLE tutor, and working with the firemen at the annual community homecoming.

I look forward to where my career will go from here. As a constant learner, I look forward to the opportunity to get involved in new things and to make a difference no matter where I might be. As Walt Disney once said, "It's kind of fun to do the impossible."