What would happen if a teacher refused to go back to school? School is hard and takes a lot of work, no one knows this more than any teacher in the PACE program like Ms. Anna Comfort.

Anna Comfort grew up in a small suburb of Tacoma called Fircrest and went to St. Charles Parish School.

“That’s how I got into golf,” said Comfort, “pretty much all there is in Fircrest is a coffee shop and a golf course. My childhood was going to school, hanging out with my three brothers, and golfing.”

Comfort is one of those people who has always known what they wanted to be. She’s always loved school, learning, and the idea of teaching.

“Being a teacher was what I always came back to and I always knew I could love teaching,” Comfort says.

She later went to Bellarmine Prep High School and Gonzaga University where she would learn about the program that would lead her to Blanchet.

PACE stands for Pacific Alliance for Catholic Education and is the organization run through the University of Portland that helps people like Ms. Comfort and Mr. Shanahan become teachers. They take candidates with little to no experience teaching and help them to get their certificate.

Comfort learned about this program during her sophomore year in college. She was double majored in English and Religious Studies, but got her teaching degree in English because they don’t offer one for theology.

“A friend of mine who was a senior was going through the application process,” comfort says.

The process is long, tedious, and has many steps just to get to the interview process. First you have to take the Graduate School Admission Exam, then you fill out an application, film a video application, and from that group of applicants they select a group to go into interview process.

Once admitted to the program, you get your master’s degree, teaching certificate, and an endorsement for your subject. The program is exactly 27 seven months and Comfort graduated last August. The program prepares you the summer before you start teaching with a 7 week boot camp for teachers.

“My first year I had no teaching experience,” Comfort says, “but the program prepares you so well the summer before.”

While teaching, you’re still in the program and you alternate between teaching during the school year and boot camp during the summers. This process is over about three years and the teachers live with other teachers in the program.

She’s not sure yet if she’ll return to Blanchet, but she is sure that she’ll continue to teach and that she never wants to go back to school.
“I’m done, I refuse to go back to school. Except for work of course, I love it here,” says Comfort.