History
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- Member for
- 2 years 2 weeks
*My Story
- I am
a teacher leader working for the students in front of me and the students who will never sit in my classroom. I am striving to create a more equitable system of public education and continuing my own education at the same time.
- I earn my daily bread
teaching 5th grade at a small autonomous school in San Jose, L.U.C.H.A.
- How my leadership has changed as a result of OTV
I am much more reflective and am finding a way to let go of guilt and become more effective in many arenas.
- Where I’ve come from and where I expect to be in the next 3-5 years
I come from Chicago! And more specifically the Chicago Public Schools. I come from a loving family that always expected the best for me and from me. I came to teaching through Teach for America but I stayed because of the remarkable children of the Alum Rock School District. In the future I want to be more connected the educational community in which I work. I would like to be a leader of a school very much like the one in which I already teach, and I would very much like to be fluent in Spanish.
- My story of impact
In my second year teaching I had a student return to my classroom a year later. He was a much more mature (in my mind) second grader than how I had remembered him to be in my class. He asked if he could help me after school and we sorted books together. He looked around and noticed that the personal libraries that he and his friends had had at their seats last year were gone. "Why don't they have any books?" His look was a mixture of genuine confusion and bit a of horror. I explained to Miguel that in the beginning of first grade, most students weren't really reading that much yet, but that they would get there soon. He took a minute to process that and then looked up at me as said, "So, you taught me how to read huh?" I nodded and he gave me a big hug. In that moment I new what my mission was, not only to teach the mechanics of reading but also to ensure that every student who left my door would have that little bit of horror at the thought of students without books.
In my first few years in the classroom it took every part of me to be that teacher who could ensure that her students were in fact reading at the end of the year. What I was missing was a larger sense of impact...outside my classroom how was I affecting childrens' lives? OTV has given me a chance to be connected to an amazing group of educators striving to do more, to leave a legacy and build more educators to continue that work long after we are gone.
