West Chicago Community High School’s new special education teacher is ready to get back into the “swing” of things.
Despite beginning his 17th year of teaching, Galotta didn’t always want to be a teacher. Growing up Galotta wanted to be the next Indiana Jones. Eventually his love of baseball took hold and his dream was to become the next third baseman for the Chicago Cubs.
Galotta spent two years at a community college where he worked as an aid in the special education department for a high school. He fell in love with the line of work, and after completing community college, he found himself transferred into the special education program at Illinois State University.
After graduating, Galotta spent 14 years working at Romeoville High School, followed by two years teaching in California.
“My co teachers are wonderful. They’re all different. My coaches are all great. They all have different personalities, but they’re all very fun and energetic and flexible, which is nice because, you know, it takes time to build a relationship, but it was comfortable from the beginning,” Galotta said.
Galotta has experience working with other teachers as he previously worked as an administrator, more specifically an assistant director of Student Services. Galotta’s CO teacher, the general ed teacher, takes on more of the whole group instruction, whereas he identifies students that need a little more focused instruction or re-instruction.
Galotta has a caseload of 11 students, ranging from freshman to seniors here at Wego. He does not have any of them in class, but keeps in contact nonetheless.
“I try to connect with them some way every three weeks, sometimes just monitoring their grades or sending them an email when there are events coming up, or family events or post secondary things, I try to share that information with them so that they can take advantage of the resources,” Galotta said.
Outside of school Galotta loves baseball and likes to listen to music. He listens to a lot of different types of music, but his favorite is classic alternative rock. As well as this, he enjoys going to concerts whenever he can, but it’s been difficult to find time to do so recently while raising his four year old and seven month old children. Galotta is excited for his future as a teacher, and as a dad.
“I’m, you know, I’m happy to be here. I’ve got really great classes. I teach mostly freshmen. I have one sophomore English, but then my den group are juniors, but they’re a fun group,” Galotta said.
