Alexander Romano is leading the charge at Jackson Prep into a new field of classes. This year is the first time “Intro to Psychology” has been offered and with bachelors’ degrees in Science, Neuroscience, Cognitive Studies and a minor in Psychology, Mr. Romano was the perfect fit for the new position.

Mr. Romano was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, and attended high school at St. Stanislaus in Bay St. Louis. After he graduated from high school, he went on to attend Millsaps College and received his undergraduate degree.

Once he finished with college, he joined the Mississippi Teacher Corps, which is a graduate program that looks for non-educational majors to serve as first-time teachers in parts of Mississippi and wants teachers to be knowledgeable about more content. There he learned many different teaching styles. With this program, you teach for two years and receive a Master’s of Education. His first teaching job was at Terry High School where he taught biology.

When Mr. Romano attended Millsaps, the Psychology program was only twelve years old and was trying to step out as an established program. He thoroughly enjoyed a few classes including: Perception, Intro to Neuroscience, Cognitive Neuroscience, and Philosophy of the Mind. He took a study abroad trip his senior year to London and Munich. While there, he attended classes on Terrorism with Doctor Thaul, the head of the Psychology department at Millsaps. On this trip, he fell in love with Psychology.

His inspiration to become a teacher came from his mother, who taught nursing school on the gulf coast. Mr. Romano was asked to be a volunteer and help coach the Junior High football team that his brother-in-law was in charge of. His brother-in-law is John Haberman, a teacher and coach at Prep.

Mr. Romano began to substitute teach whenever possible while coaching football and baseball. Along with teaching Intro to Psychology, he is the textbook manager for the 2016-17 school year.

In his first year of teaching, he has a total of 18 students. His class has a hefty workload and a great amount of dedication. The biggest thing that helps him while teaching is that he relates to his students fairly easily, because he is not much older than his students and his whole life he has spent around kids.

Communication with people comes natural to Mr. Romano. He believes that to be a teacher you have to want your students to grow and get something out of your teaching and he receives a lot of satisfaction from this.

Mr. Romano would like to teach a straight Neuroscience class. His favorite part of teaching Psychology is that a lot of students are not familiar with this subject and bringing information to his students brings him pleasure.