Working with special needs students was a summer job for Charles Stamback, but he liked it so much he switched career paths. Now the path has led to Wiscasset Middle HIgh School, where Stamback, 29, of Farmingdale teaches special education. He started this year.

Lisbon Falls born and raised, Stamback graduated Lisbon High School in 2005 and started college at Valley Forge Military College in Wayne, Pennsylvania. He moved on to Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia his sophomore year and completed his junior and senior years at the University of Maine at Orono.

Stambach has a bachelor’s degree in kinesiology and exercise science. Kinesiology looks at human movement; and Stamback planned to work in physical therapy.

A summer stint at the Margaret Murphy Center for Children in Lewiston got him rethinking the therapy work he said would have had him working with a limited set of solutions. Teaching was different. “I really liked the problem-solving aspect of it, because there’s really no one right solution and it’s a very complicated thing to try to figure out and see all the moving pieces, and figure out what is the best solution.

“It’s outside the box, something different every day, something you would have never expected to hear or see,” he added about teaching’s appeal.

Stamback’s knowledge of exercise aids his teaching in a number of ways.The steps in teaching a new physical skill are similar to those in teaching math or science, hw said. And he draws on his background to incorporate movement into the school day. “We have 75-minute classes and that’s a long time to sit. And so I’ve done a lot with kids, doing weight-lifting-type programs and exercises, helping them find different outlets to sit through a class and have that sensory output ... Without (that) they’re just going to kind of sit there and veg out through the period. And we want to make the time more useful.

“We try to take a five or seven-minute break in the middle and I encourage kids to get up and walk around, get a drink of water, or stretch their legs.” Stamback said it will help anyone, but has added significance in special education. “For those learners that have trouble maintaining their focus and struggle with learning, learning isn’t always a positive experience because it’s difficult, so just to have that relief or that break from it is a good thing.”

Stamback was an educational technician for Regional School Unit 22’s Wagner Middle School in Winterport for more than five years, then became a special education teacher at Hamden Academy. He has a master’s degree in special education from the University of Maine at Orono.

Wife Stephanie Stamback works in child nutrition services at the Maine Department of Education.