MEGAN DOBSON
Who is your hero?
Bobby Kennedy.
What musician would you most like to see perform in your living room?
Jake Owen! But we’d be outside having a barefoot blue-jean night!
What was your childhood nickname?
Dobby… I was before the elf.
It’s 9pm on a Saturday in Portland. Where might we find you?
Is it snowing? Government Camp, Oregon!
What did you want to be when you grew up?
I always wanted to be a teacher, and here I am! I will confess to a 4th grade aspiration to play high school football, though…Probably a good thing that didn’t work out.
What I do…
I volunteer with Levé on the Events Committee and am honored to serve as vice president of the board. During the day, I teach middle school Geography at Self Enhancement, Inc. (SEI) Academy. SEI is a nonprofit organization in North Portland that supports at-risk urban youth. I also serve on the Community Grant Review Committee for the Carolyn Foundation in Minneapolis and co-founded Saturday Academy’s BrainGames fundraising event.
Volunteering with Levé provides me with a unique opportunity to engage in nonprofit work in our community and connect it back to work that I do in the classroom. In 2010, I was honored to receive the Bank of America Local Hero Award for my work starting a Community Engagement program at Athey Creek Middle School in West Linn, Oregon. Really my students and Levé deserved the award. Following the Levé model, my students researched, inquired, deliberated and finally donated their time and resources to local nonprofits that they decided needed them the most. Assisted by Levé volunteers, our class completed over 500 hours of community service and raised over $4,000, all in one semester! It was a thrilling learning experience for all of us.
I graduated from the University of Oregon with a BA in History and Women’s Studies and from the Lewis & Clark College of Education and Counseling with a Master of Arts in Teaching.
