Pascack Valley High School History and Business Teacher Jonathan Rose has had an uncommon path back to PVHS to become a teacher after previously attending Valley as a student. From working as a door-to-door salesman, to having various jobs in corporate America, to finally settling down in the classroom, Rose has had a unique journey to his current career.

After graduating from PV, Rose attended Springfield College in Massachusetts, where he majored in business. After a year, he transferred to Rutgers and graduated with a degree in economics.

Life after college

Rose’s first job out of college was at Enterprise, the global car rental company.

“It was a very interesting job…every employee there does all [of the] functions of the business… They train you to essentially take over,” said Rose. “They want you to take over a branch, and then you essentially get a piece of that branch.”

Rose went all over Bergen County for his job, but he only worked there for a year.

“They wanted me to become an assistant manager at Hackensack, which was a major branch at the time,” said Rose. “That was a clear stepping stone in moving up in the company, but I could not see myself doing that long-term.”

After leaving Enterprise, Rose found himself struggling to find another job. He eventually worked as a door-to-door salesman selling freezer display cases to businesses in New York City.

“What I would do is I would take the train into the city at 7 a.m.… You would start at delis and smaller restaurants, and then as the day went on, you would go to higher-scale restaurants where high-end chefs would sell pastries and other goods,” Rose said. “Basically, my office was in a bag, literally knocking on doors asking if people were interested.”

Rose was still very young at the time, and he found small success in his job; however, he began to realize that it wasn’t for him, especially on the colder days when he would have to walk around the city.

Entering corporate America

After doing some odd jobs for a little while, Rose found himself in corporate America, working for Avis Budget Car Rental. He worked in their corporate office, where he worked in pricing.

“They would give me an area of the country, my area was the Southeast, [which was] basically every airport from North Carolina down through Florida, [and] I would set the prices of the rental cars,” said Rose. 

Rose detailed how the different areas of the country had differently priced cars and how certain events influenced the price. 

“You have to deal with different events. For example, one year the Super Bowl was in Tampa,” said Rose. “You would set the prices based on demand. All these events that took place, I would set the prices of the rental cars.”

Rose stayed with Avis for a few years and even got promoted at the job, becoming a manager. 

After leaving Avis, he found himself working another corporate job. This time, he worked at Medco, a pharmacy benefit manager that managed prescription benefits.

“I would be behind the scenes, telling the insurance company what to charge the copay [and] setting the prices of that,” said Rose. “A lot of that is set on the population. So you would have a lot of older people taking this drug, generic drugs… I would work directly with insurance companies all over the country to determine what the price structures would be.”

While he enjoyed working at Medco, he still felt as if it wasn’t his calling, and again, decided to leave the company in search of a better opportunity.

“I tried to leave there [Medco] once, and they offered me a promotion,” said Rose, but he was eventually able to leave Medco when he was 30. “It was growing, and I was feeling like I wasn’t doing something worthwhile. I felt like I [was] chasing a profit.”

Becoming a teacher

Rose recalled a time when he heard Jeff Jasper, PV history teacher and basketball coach, speak at one of his brother’s graduation ceremonies. The speech stuck with him and helped lead him to teaching.

“He had such an amazing relationship with kids, and that was evident through his speech, and that’s something that’s always stuck with me,” said Rose. “That’s something meaningful in life.”

Rose mentioned how it was always in the back of his head that he might want to teach, and his wife was a teacher at the time, so he knew a little bit about the job and what it entailed. So, after his daughter was born in 2011, he returned to school part-time to get his teaching certification.

“When I went to my company and told them that I was quitting, they said if you consider part-time, we will give you half your salary,” said Rose. “[So] I stayed home with my daughter,… [and] I worked part-time at the company the whole time while I was at school for my master’s in education.”

As a graduate of PV’s 1999 class, Rose’s life would take him back to Valley over a decade later, in 2014, to begin his teaching career. 

“I wanted to do something more meaningful in my life. I wanted to wake up in the morning and feel good about what I was doing,” said Rose. “The money was great, but I thought, what good was the money if I never could enjoy it?”

Rose wanted to value his time, and a big part of that was also having more time with his family, specifically spending more quality time with his kids and coaching them in sports.

After completing his teaching degree, Rose saw an opening at Pascack Valley, and he interviewed with former Assistant Principal Debbie Squiccimarri, who then sent his resume to current District Supervisor of Social Studies, Internships, and Professional Studies Joe Orlak.

Rose ended up getting an interview with Orlak and had a demo lesson in the spring of 2014 with now fellow History Teacher John Murtaugh. He then had another interview with former Principal Thomas DeMaio before finally getting offered the job by former Superintendent Erik Gundersen.

“For me, it helped that I had other experiences working… I know I couldn’t have been a teacher right out of college…it wasn’t who I was, I needed other experience,” said Rose. “Especially walking into an economics class, financial literacy class, or helping kids with DECA, I had other experiences that I could draw off of, and it definitely helped.”

Reflection on his journey

Rose now teaches the AP Macroeconomics and Financial Literacy courses at Pascack Valley, which help introduce students who might want a career in business or economics to learn more about the topic and solidify their interests. Rose’s ultimate reason to return to teaching went back to wanting to make an impact.

Rose explained that a big difference between working a corporate job versus a teaching job is the fact that a corporate job is for profit.

“You have to realize that it’s a business first. If you are not performing up to expectations, you get fired. There’s no do-overs, especially when you’re working with major clients,” Rose explained. “You’re reading over contracts, and if you miss one thing, you can cost a company millions of dollars…  You’re not getting a lot of sleep, you’re probably not eating well, not working out. The quality of life is not what I wanted.” 

Rose made it clear that it’s never too late to change career paths, even at an older age. Even though teaching was always at the back of his mind, it only came into fruition later on. Despite having multiple other teaching opportunities, he knew that he wanted to come back to Valley, despite living an hour away.

Orlak described the process of hiring Rose, explaining how his application stood out and how his connection to Valley helped him.

“As a former student, he brings in a perspective that obviously other people do not have,” said 

Orlak. “The position we were looking to hire was a history teacher who had some business knowledge who could take over the AP Macroeconomics course, as well as our Financial Literacy course.”

His outside world experience helped Rose not only attain the job, but it also helps him teach these courses.

“We saw that he would be the best fit to achieve this plan to expand opportunities for students,” Orlak explained.

Rose’s unique journey clearly impacted his teaching career, and he hopes to also have an impact on the students he now teaches. 

Despite years of in-between jobs and uncertainty, Rose has found his home, right here where his journey started. 

“I would never have it any other way…I grew up here, I graduated from Valley — it’s changed, but it hasn’t changed that much,” said Rose. “I still know what it means to graduate from here…it never really leaves you.”