Many students have had the chance to meet Mr. Christian Sheffield, the long term substitute for Mrs. Shields during her maternity leave. However, Mr. Sheffield’s journey to CAHS was a long one.

Mr. Sheffield said he wanted to be a businessman when he was a kid, not knowing what it meant at the time. If not a businessman, “a lawyer, because I like to argue,” he said.

However, Mr. Sheffield did not go on to follow these careers. Instead he went into college for theatre. Mr. Sheffield said he attended San Francisco State University to receive his undergraduate theatre major.

After seeing his colleagues struggle to land acting parts, Mr. Sheffield decided to find a different career. “As soon as I graduated, I realized I needed to get a job that paid the bills. I looked at a lot of my classmates … they were waiting tables and struggling to get parts,” he said. 

“It was the Fall of 2004. I had taken various jobs, but nothing was seriously progressing into a career. I just, I thought, ‘You know, I work pretty well with kids, and there’s a bit of a stage in the classroom. I think I should try this.’ So I started as a substitute, and a couple years later I was a full time teacher in Los Angeles.”

Mr. Sheffield had two teaching interests. “It was a toss up between History and English. I heard there were more job openings in English, so I decided to take the English route.” He added a History credential roughly two years ago.

Then, in 2009 and again in 2011, massive budget cuts arose, both of which Mr. Sheffield was a victim. “When I got laid off the second time in 2011, I moved to North County San Diego, because I heard the schools were good down here, and I have been looking for full time work ever since,” Mr. Sheffield said. 

Mr. Sheffield then got a job as a long term sub at Mission Hills High School, teaching 9th grade Honors English. “There was an AP teacher there who heard from Mrs. Taylor here at CAHS that there would be another long term position opening for Mrs. Shields, who was pregnant at the time,” he said.

“This is an incredible school. When I first decided that I wanted to be a teacher, in Fall of 2004, this is the way I imagined it would be like,” Mr. Sheffield said. He also said he hoped to have students who behaved well, were interested in what he had to say and worked incredibly well without too much assistance. “I had this pie-in-the-sky idea of what it would be like. This is the first time I ever really experienced it,” he said.

“All my teaching jobs in Los Angeles, they were very rewarding, but they were much more challenging, especially in the classroom management department,” Mr. Sheffield said. “The kids here, they’re much better behaved, they come from great families, there is a great group of teachers here, and the administrators here are really supportive,” Mr. Sheffield continued.

Mr. Sheffield confirmed he will continue substituting at CAHS, but he hopes to eventually teach full time.

One of the many things Mr. Sheffield has become known for here at CAHS is his guitar playing. He said that he used music books to teach himself how to play the guitar. Then, a few years later, a friend who majored in music gave him a handful of lessons and taught him some music theory. “You know, I daydream about being a rock star … if I wrote more, I would have probably pursued it more.”

Mr. Sheffield enjoys teaching the AP Lang classes. “[The day before Winter Break] I set aside a half hour of the AP classes to kind of hang out, eat food with the kids and play guitar . And the kids were really excited to hear me play, and a lot of them sang along and had requests. It [was] just a great Kumbaya moment,” Mr. Sheffield said.