PASCO, Wash. – For 16 years, Jeff Spaur has taught at Ochoa Middle School in Pasco, the same school where he started his teaching career. Today, he’s inspiring his students to dive into their imagination after he self-published two novels.
“I really love the community over here in East Pasco, I really love working with these kids and developing these young readers and writers,” Spaur said.
In his 16th year of teaching, Spaur knows each day is a new adventure and each year brings a new reason to feel right where he’s meant to be.
“What makes this a special place is the students,” he said.
In his first year of teaching at Ochoa Middle School, a single student inspired Spaur to set out on one of the bigger adventures of his life. Not long after the sun rose in the early first hours of the school day, rubbing the sleep from her eyes, one of Spaur’s students always sat in the front row. One day, she said something that would stick with Spaur forever.
“We were reading “The Hunger Games,” and she said to me, ‘Mr. Spaur, the only reason I’m at school today is because I want to know what happens next,’” Spaur said. “When I saw that moment right there, I thought, ‘gosh, the power of this book brought her to school? What if I could do that for a student in the future.’”
And now he is. It took time, patience, and imagination for Spaur to write his first book, “The Ashen Yard” which was self-published in 2021. Then the sequel, “The Ashen Cleanse,” self-published in 2024.
For a kid who preferred the basketball court instead of the library growing up in the Tri-Cities, it’s been a journey, to say the least. And because of his writings, Spaur is inspiring his students to take leaps of their own.
“I try to write whenever I can, as often as I can,” Marilu Trevino, one of Spaur’s students, said. “Don’t hold back, ya know? Because once you open it, it’s like a present, and it’s a very valuable thing. A lot of people ignore it, but you can be one of them that actually takes it into consideration and ends up falling in love.”
Marilu is in Spaur’s writing class; seeing him self-publish a book helped her believe she could too. The same goes for Marely Sanchez.
“Back in elementary school, I kept thinking of really good ideas for stories and movies, and I thought, ‘does this not exist? And I realized, oh I can write it, and I can make this exist,’” Sanchez said, beaming.
These two friends are writing stories of their own, with the goal of finishing them by the end of the school year. And eventually, they said with Spaur’s help, they hope to self-publish their books, just like he did.
According to the Scholastic Kids & Family Reading Report from 2023, half of school-aged kids believe reading books for fun is highly important, however children get older, they’re placing less importance on reading for fun, dropping 43 percent among 12 to 17 -year-olds. The report also said the biggest predictor of reading frequency in children is having a parent or guardian who believes reading is important. Sometimes, a teacher, like Spaur – can be that difference.
“Reading can be difficult, and it can be boring, but there’s a book for everybody out there and most of the time what I see with these young students, these middle schoolers, just don’t know how to find that yet,” Spaur said. “So, some of that is my job to help find that love for a book.”
And sometimes all it takes is one book.
If you’re interested in reading either of Spaur’s novels, they’re up for sale on Amazon Prime.
