GHS Indian post would like to recognize Coach Phillip Mcham for teacher spotlight. Coach Mcham is a career counselor at Gaffney High School. He has been working at GHS for twelve years now, and with the CCSD for fifteen years. He is a graduate of Gaffney High, class of 2003. He attended Gardner Webb University upon graduation, majoring in Physical Education. He then transferred to Benedict College and majored in Interdisciplinary Studies. He graduated college in 2008, Cuma laude with a 3.5 GPA. He began his career as a Special Education teacher at Ewing Middle School in 2008. Pursing his career in education, he began working at Gaffney High School in 2011 as a Driver’s Ed Assistance until 2020. Now as a Career Counselor, he is in the process of completing his Master’s Degree from Liberty University.  

His personality is open, friendly, patient, and kind. Apart from these attributes, he holds southwestern values. This means he is detailed oriented, has a warrior’s spirit and servant’s heart. He values people’s opinions and emotions which is why he became a Career Specialist. He has a passion for this content area; this is what he desired to do right after high school. He just had to find the right track; he says, “hopefully I’ll be able to continue this role until the good Lord has something else for me.” He envisions to become an Athletic Director one day as well. He is also the head basketball coach here at GHS and he enjoys both roles. Until he gets to become an Athletic Director, he will continue to be a Career Counselor and the head basketball coach. He encourages creativity through his counseling with students, having them explore different career paths, job shadowing and internship opportunities to learn about post-secondary options and opportunities after graduation.  

His extra-curricular hobbies include fishing, which he has a passion for and playing video games with his son on the weekends. He likes to travel in the summer too, either to the beach or the mountains. He used to play basketball in his spare time, but he cannot move as much as he used to. So, he just tries and lives out his sports stuff through video games. A lot of his engagement with students is through counseling and one on one sessions, sometimes group sessions through classrooms. Sometimes he will be invited to classrooms to do career guided lessons with students to offer assessments. A gifted student to him is a student that knows who they are and what they want to become. When describing himself as a high school student, McHam says that he was a typical teenager. He could be silly and a serious, discipline athlete. He was just a typical teenager trying to find his way, navigating the whole “who’s my friend, who’s not my friend” scenario. McHam considered peer pressure to be the biggest challenge for students. He thinks peer pressure is the biggest challenge students face every day. Because peer pressure creates a positive or negative influence that requires the student to deal with it and make a choice that will directly affect their outcome.