Dr. Wayne Hatcher is not exactly new here at Chanute High School.

While this may be his first year officially teaching, Dr. Hatcher has worked at Chanute High School prior to this year.

His first year, the 2016-2017 school year, he served as the ALC supervisor. Now you can find him in room 205 (Mr. Bruner’s previous classroom).

While Hatcher may be not have much expertise in the high school scene, he definitely has the experience of teaching under his belt.

When interviewed Hatcher told us, counting the years he spent serving as a dean of students and full time administrator, he has been teaching for a collective twenty years, “Part time… probably about twenty,” Hatcher said.

If you take everything out and just count the teaching hours he told us it would add up to be near half a decade.

“…more like five or six,” he said.

All but one of these years he has served as a college professor.

We also asked him how high school differed from college.

“… the overall approach,” Hatcher said, “… that students take, in the fact that students have been in a situation with public schools where for thirteen or fourteen years you have to go to school; when teaching college it’s because they want to go… I have students in class in college from seventeen to forty seven.”

When Hatcher took the ALC role, he felt that retirement just was not for him, although he prefers teaching over ALC, so once the opportunity presented itself he took the teaching role.

We also asked if he preferred to teach one over the other.

He responded that he prefers teaching high school over college, because he can work with high school kids and help them make decisions that can major affect their future.

While he is having to adjust from teaching college students to teaching high school students, he also has to adapt to the different kind of environment here at CHS.