Oran Spencer has spent three decades in classrooms, gymnasiums, and the driver’s seat of a transportation business he built himself. His career has always turned on one instinct: showing up for people who need guidance.
Teaching science in a public school system, coaching youth basketball, and running a transportation service do not have much in common on paper. The daily routines are different. The skills required are different. But for Oran Spencer, the three have always converged on the same question: what does it take to show up for someone who needs you, and what happens when you do it consistently over years instead of moments?
Spencer teaches science in Bridgeport Public Schools in Connecticut. He has been in classrooms for more than two decades, first as a substitute in Norwalk and later in a permanent role in Bridgeport. He also coaches the St. Ann Academy Wildcats, a youth basketball team that includes his own son. And since 2005, he has run OSTRONG Cab Corp, a transportation business that serves medical voucher passengers and airport travelers across Connecticut and New York. Each role asks for different hours and different skills, but all three demand the same thing: reliability over time.
Oran Spencer is a science teacher at Bridgeport Public Schools in Connecticut and the founder of OSTRONG Cab Corp. He holds a Bachelor’s in Biology from the University at Buffalo, a Master’s in Education from Mercy College, and an Educational Leadership Certification from Southern Connecticut State University. He has coached the St. Ann Academy Wildcats since 2018 and volunteers at the VA Hospital in Buffalo, New York.
You immigrated from Jamaica to the Bronx when you were eight. What about that transition still affects how you teach or coach today?
The rhythm of the two places was completely different. Jamaica had warmth and familiarity. The Bronx had concrete, crowds, and a pace that did not slow down for anyone still learning its language. There was no gradual transition. You arrived, and you figured it out. What carried me through was routine and the people who were already there waiting. I had a large family, three brothers and three sisters, and the household absorbed me. That taught me something I use now: students and players do not need you to explain everything at once. They need you to be there consistently while they figure out the rest. The worst thing you can do is assume the transition is easy because it looks smooth from the outside.
What do people consistently get wrong about your work?
They think teaching science is about making students memorize facts and formulas. It is not. It is about helping them see that they already live inside the systems we are studying. A kid in Bridgeport breathes air, drinks water, and watches the seasons change. My job is to show them they already have the raw material. The memorization only works if they see the connection first. When I lose a student, it is almost always because I tried to build the vocabulary before I built the curiosity.
The worst thing you can do is assume the transition is easy because it looks smooth from the outside.
You earned a degree in biology in 1998 and then moved into teaching instead of lab work or research. What made the classroom more appealing than the bench?
I liked the science, but I liked the people more. Lab work is precise and important, but it did not give me the same kind of feedback. In a classroom, you see whether something worked or did not work in real time. A student either understands or they do not, and you adjust. That loop is immediate. My mother worked in the medical field, and my father ran his own businesses. Between the two of them, I saw both instincts: care and building. Teaching let me do both at once. I could care about the students and build something with them over the course of a semester or a year.
You started as a substitute teacher in Norwalk before moving to a permanent role in Bridgeport. What does substituting teach you that a permanent position does not?
Substituting teaches you how differently individual students learn. You walk into a classroom with no relationship, no continuity, and no context. The students do not know you, and you do not know them. You have to read the room fast and adjust to whatever structure the regular teacher left behind. Some kids need clear instructions. Some need space to ask questions. Some need to see that you are not going to give up on them in the first ten minutes. That experience made me better once I had my own classroom, because I stopped assuming one approach would work for everyone.
What is the one thing you notice first in a struggling student that other teachers tend to miss?
I notice when they stop asking questions. A student who is confused will usually ask for help, at least at first. A student who has given up stops asking altogether. They sit quietly, they do not disrupt, and they let the lesson wash over them. Teachers sometimes interpret that as cooperation, but it is the opposite. It is disengagement. Once I see that pattern, I know I have a narrow window to pull them back in. If I wait too long, they have already decided the subject is not for them.
A student who is confused will usually ask for help. A student who has given up stops asking altogether.
You completed an Educational Leadership Certification in 2022, nearly two decades into your teaching career. What made you pursue that now rather than earlier?
I wanted to have influence beyond my own classroom. After twenty years of teaching, I had seen patterns that individual teachers cannot fix alone. Scheduling decisions, curriculum choices, resource allocation—those happen at a level above the classroom, and they shape what a teacher can actually do once the door closes. The certification gives me a way to contribute to those decisions rather than just work around them. I am not interested in leaving the classroom entirely, but I am interested in making the system work better for the teachers who are still in it.
You founded OSTRONG Cab Corp in 2005 and later partnered with Best Deal Car Service to transport medical voucher passengers. How did you identify that as an underserved need?
I was already in the transportation business, and I kept hearing the same frustration from people who needed reliable rides to medical appointments. They had vouchers, but the services were inconsistent. Drivers would show up late or not at all, and patients would miss appointments. It was a business decision, but it echoed the same thing I do in the classroom: show up when people need you. We built the service around dependability rather than volume. That meant fewer rides, but it also meant people could trust us to get them there on time.
You acquired an NYC taxi medallion as part of that business. What does owning a medallion actually mean in practice?
In New York, the medallion signals legitimacy. It is not just a legal credential. It tells passengers and other businesses that you have been vetted and that you are operating within the system. It also represents a significant financial commitment, which means you have skin in the game. For me, it was about building trust in a competitive market. People needed to know that the service was reliable, and the medallion was part of that signal.
You have been coaching the St. Ann Academy Wildcats since 2018. Your son plays on the team. How does that change what you can and cannot do as a coach?
It changes everything. I have to be more careful about favoritism, real or perceived. I cannot give him more playing time just because he is my son, and I cannot be harder on him to compensate. The other players are watching, and they will notice if the balance is off. The advantage is that I know his strengths and weaknesses better than I know anyone else’s, so I can push him in ways that help him grow. But I also have to check myself constantly to make sure I am coaching the team and not just coaching my son.
The worst students to give up on are the ones who act like they don’t care. They care the most.
What is the one skill you teach on the basketball court that has nothing to do with winning games?
How to recover after a mistake. Every player is going to miss a shot, turn the ball over, or lose their man on defense. The difference between a good player and a struggling one is not whether they make mistakes. It is how fast they move on to the next play. I see kids get stuck replaying the error in their heads, and it costs them the next two or three possessions. I teach them to acknowledge it, adjust if they need to, and then let it go. That skill matters more off the court than on it.
You volunteer at the VA Hospital in Buffalo. What does that work involve, and why did you start doing it?
The work involves spending time with veterans, listening to their experiences, and helping where the hospital allows me to help. I started because I wanted to give time to people who had served the country and needed care. It was not tied to my teaching credentials or my business interests. It was just time. Sitting with people who had been through what they had been through was a different kind of education. It taught me about sacrifice and resilience in ways that coursework never could.
What is one thing you believed about teaching fifteen years ago that you no longer believe now?
I used to believe that the best students were the ones who paid attention and followed instructions. I thought discipline and compliance were the same thing. They are not. The students who challenge you, who ask why the lesson matters, who push back on the structure—those are often the ones thinking the hardest. I wasted time early in my career trying to quiet those students down instead of channeling that energy. Now I see resistance as engagement, and I work with it instead of against it.
If you were advising someone starting their first teaching job in a public school system tomorrow, what is the one thing you would tell them to focus on in the first month?
Learn the students’ names as fast as you can, and use them. It sounds small, but it is not. A student whose name you remember feels seen. A student whose name you forget feels like one more face in a crowd. The first month sets the tone for the rest of the year, and the tone you want is: I see you, I know you are here, and I am paying attention. Everything else—lesson plans, assessments, classroom management—builds on that foundation.
What stays true about teaching and coaching ten years from now, no matter how much the tools or the technology change?
The relationship. You can change the curriculum, the textbooks, the technology in the classroom, and the way students access information. But teaching still depends on a student trusting that you know what you are doing and that you care whether they learn. Coaching depends on a player trusting that you see their potential and that you will push them toward it. That does not change. The tools might make some things easier, but they do not replace the relationship. If the student or the player does not trust you, none of the rest of it works.
