PORT ANGELES — Like a lot of people in the education profession, Michelle Charles knows she could be making a lot more money doing something else.
But she probably wouldn’t be as happy.
The Native American Interventionist counselor at Stevens Middle School — recently named counselor of the year by the Catching the Dream National Native American Education Foundation — said her job is fulfilling on many levels.
One reason is that she gets to work at the same school where her two sons attend.
But another is that Charles’ primary task is to help the school’s 85 Native American students, which represent about 15 percent of the school population, improve their academic achievement.
Her efforts toward this end seem to be paying off.
Since Charles started at Stevens in early 2002, Native American student performance on the Washington Assessment of Student Learning have improved dramatically.
Results from last year’s seventh-grade WASL tests show that a greater percentage of the school’s Native American students passed three of the four WASL tests — reading, writing and science — than the total state student average.
