This interview is one in a series spotlighting Los Angeles teachers, their unique and innovative classroom approaches, and their thoughts on how the education system can better support teachers in guiding students to success.

Alexandra Chavez teaches at and helped develop SAGE, a social and gender equity magnet school in Los Angeles Unified School District that draws students from across the city. (Alexandra Chavez)

For Alexandra Chavez, having seen the challenges her brother with special needs has to face was her biggest driver to become a teacher seven years ago. She thought the profession would allow her to play a critical role in the lives of students like him.

She recalls how she and her brother grew up attending the same schools and how that allowed her to experience firsthand how teachers impact students’ lives.

“He was deaf and on the autism spectrum and so seeing how some of his teachers would bring him to my classes to deal with his behavior or help him understand something. I really felt that I could make more of a difference in students’ lives, like my brother’s life, if I became a teacher,” Chavez said.

Now that she is teaching at SAGE, the first-of-its-kind social and gender equity magnet school in Los Angeles Unified School District, Chavez believes her job can truly be transformative.

Chavez grew up in the San Fernando Valley area north of Los Angeles and attended LAUSD schools. She graduated from Loyola Marymount University with a degree in English and education. Before joining SAGE, she taught English language arts and English language development at Stevenson Middle school in East L.A., Vista Middle School, and Sun Valley High School.

Before SAGE became a magnet program, Chavez helped with a gender sexuality pride club on the Milikan campus because she said that many of her students felt left out of the curriculum. The principal then saw an opportunity to expand the club into a program for the whole school.

“I think honestly it’s about how this curriculum is trying to get the students to feel accepted in it and to reflect them and include them and consider them at every level. That is just such an engaging idea. It’s a novel concept,” Chavez said. “I mean, why not reflect all of our students’ diverse backgrounds and experiences in what we teach them? It seemed kind of like a no-brainer.”

SAGE incorporates gender studies and social justice themes into all of its academic courses. It’s located on the campus of Millikan Middle School in Sherman Oaks. It opened this school year, serving 70 sixth-graders and will expand by a grade level each year for the next two years. Millikan is an affiliatedLAUSD charter that is also home to a Performing Arts Magnet and Cinema Arts Academy.

SAGE offers a unique curriculum, designed to teach middle school students strong academic and social skills. The magnet program also offers its students a three-year program in speech and debate along with opportunities for community service and activism. Students practice yoga daily to develop physical and social-emotional strength.

“We are committed to serving all students and celebrating each and every student as an individual,” Superintendent Austin Beutner said in a news release during a visit to the school in October. “In a time when Washington seems to focus on conflict and differences, we must teach our students that the best way forward is through better understanding, kindness and inclusion.”

LA School Report asked Chavez about what could be done better or what needs to change in the education system to allow reforms and innovation to take place in the classroom, as well as her goals for the 2019-20 school year. Her answers have been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Can you share more about this magnet program and how it works on a daily basis?

I think that one of the big tenets of this program, in general, is the idea that we’re not just incorporating the academic component of the student, but it’s really education of the whole child. We’re incorporating that social-emotional aspect as well through yoga, through the mindfulness that we practice in class. So we’re teaching them civic responsibility, critical thinking, computer literacy, but we’re also encouraging them to be well rounded and know how to take care of themselves emotionally and mentally. I think that really sets this program apart. A lot of programs are just academics and rigor. For us, we do that as well, but it’s really focusing on the social-emotional aspect as well.

What is the profile of the student population you’re serving?

Oh, my kids are great. Yeah, I mean our kids are a variety of kids, so they come from anywhere. One of the really great things about being such a unique program is that we attracted kids from everywhere, from all sorts of neighborhoods, which made us really stand out for the district. It was the first program of its kind, and so my kids come from all over LA. They come from an hour away to maybe five minutes away. So their backgrounds are really diverse and so there’s no real one way to meet their needs. But we’re lucky enough that we have a Chromebook cart in class every day. So I’m able to customize to our LMS, our Learning Management System, what they have access to, so I can meet every kid or at least ideally every kid at the level that they need in order to access the curriculum best.

They use their Chromebooks every day to supplement our Learning Management System, Schoology, which is kind of like a college course. You can post assignments, you can create tests, quizzes, documents. So that’s kind of where computer literacy kicks in. As an instructor, I can assign an assignment for Sally that’s different from Bobby and Sue. … Some of them come from really difficult backgrounds. They maybe have one parent or one of their parents is really ill or they’re home alone a lot. So it makes it easier for me to customize my lessons to have them meet me where they are and then I can add more supports as we go.

It has only been five months since the program started its first year, but how are your students responding to the curriculum?

When we first started discussing these concepts in this curriculum, we had so many people saying, ‘Oh, these kids, they won’t know what to do with it. They won’t understand it. They won’t be able to do it.’ But that’s really not the case. I mean, these kids have voices, they have strong opinions, they have strong ideas, and they’re more than willing to showcase it. So I think that the most amazing thing and the most surprising and rewarding thing has been just the investment that these kids have in talking about the concepts that we’re talking about.

Doing the service-learning projects, doing the mindfulness. They enjoy it and they’re engaged because of it. That has just been the most rewarding and I think the most amazing thing to see, especially when that wasn’t something that many people thought about our program.

• Read more: All in: A Southern California school with a radical — and successful — vision for students with disabilities

How is the school district supporting you or what can the district do better to support teachers in general?

I would say that keeping lines of communication open is really important. Making sure that there’s a voice of representation for everyone at the table that is making decisions is super important. But in terms of support for the program, the district has been great. I mean they have really kind of helped us navigate this first year of development and the planning and the approvals. It’s been a lot of support and outpouring of support really from all different parts of the district.

What do you think is the most common misconception about the teaching profession that you get to hear?

One of the biggest ones is all we do is grade papers, because that’s all we’re good for, is just grading papers. I think something that’s important for people to understand is that teaching isn’t just, I send my kid to school, they sit in my class. Education itself is a dynamic process. It changes from class to class. It changes from student to student, it changes from teacher to teacher. It’s constantly changing. I think it’s important to understand that education isn’t perfect. It’s growing, it’s learning. And every new generation, every new class of kids really makes it different from an experience that has come before. So the conception may be that I’m sitting as an English teacher, grading essays and I don’t take the time to get to know my kids or I don’t know how they can handle classes of 40 and have 200 kids and know all their names. But, we do and their kids are like our kids.

So I think it’s really important for people to realize that we care as much for our students as their parents do — if not more. We spend eight hours a day with them and we try our best to use the time that we have with them effectively. So I guess that’s a really big takeaway is that the conception is that teachers — that just their students are bins that you put in information, but it’s a process. I’m learning from them as much as they’re learning from me. So I guess that’s important for people to recognize, that it’s a dynamic experience.

• Read more: Teacher Spotlight: Ednovate’s Kyle Perez-Robinson on mentoring 19 girls through all 4 years of high school, breaking down barriers for future Latina scientists and missing her students over summer break

What do you think parents can do better to support teachers?

I think in general parents really should talk more to their kids. Engage with them about what they’re doing in classes, ask questions if they’re unsure, really make every effort to get to know the teachers, get to know the curriculum because we’re a team. It’s not pitting one parent against the teacher. It’s, ‘How are you?’ and supporting the growth of your kid. I think if parents really listened to what their kids have to say, there’s no way that we can fail them.

What would you say has been one of your biggest accomplishments as a teacher so far?

I would say being a part of this magnet (program) is one of the biggest accomplishments in my career. It’s a really young career, so being able to bring something to life that really does reflect mindfulness and responsibility and equity is super important. It’s been transformative for me as an educator. It challenges me every day. That’s the highlight of my teaching career thus far, my ability to participate and help develop this program.

What’s your main goal or goals as a teacher for this school year?

I would say this year my goal is really to embrace change and be flexible. We’ve had a lot that has happened this school year, districtwide and statewide that has really impacted instruction. Just knowing that sometimes a kid’s emotional and social health is a little more important than the dynamic and awesome standards-based lesson I have planned. Just being flexible with what’s going on for them or what’s going on for myself. I’m just wanting to, I guess, to be patient is a really important goal this first year of development and prep and planning.

This interview is one in a series spotlighting Los Angeles teachers, their unique and innovative classroom approaches, and their thoughts on how the education system can better support teachers in guiding students to success.

Manuel “Manny” Albert III teaches STEM at Bloomfield High School, part of the Alliance College-Ready Public Schools.

Manuel “Manny” Albert III experienced what it was like living in two very different environments early on in his life when his family moved from a disadvantaged community in South Central Los Angeles to the more affluent city of Cerritos, 20 miles southeast of Los Angeles.

“My parents and my sisters and I, we still went to South Central on weekends, family events, church, and it was like living in two different worlds,” Albert said. “It was a completely different demographic, culturally, just everything.”

He attended LAUSD schools in his early school years, but when he began attending public schools in Cerritos, a city where the majority of the population is Asian, he saw “dramatic” differences.

Once he graduated from high school, he enrolled in a six-year doctorate in pharmacy program, obtained his license and worked as a pharmacist for 10 years in New York City and New Jersey. But he returned to South Central Los Angeles often for the holidays and family celebrations.

“Talking to my cousins and hearing about my nephews growing up, they told me that the schools that they were in in the neighborhood were not getting better and, in fact, were getting worse,” Albert said. That motivated him to enter the teaching profession.

“I would come home and see and hear all these stories about what’s going on in classrooms, what’s going on with my own relatives concerning their careers, and it really provoked me to really think about, ‘Am I doing professionally what I can do to help my family? But also even at a bigger scale, to help my community?’”

In 2015, Albert joined Teach for America, a nonprofit that recruits recent college graduates to teach for two years in low-income schools across the country. He started teaching STEM at Bloomfield High School, part of the Alliance College-Ready Public Schools charter schools network, in Southeast L.A., where he is in his fifth year as a teacher.

Albert said he has plans to pursue an administrative or leadership position in education because he believes he can have a bigger impact on fixing some of the things that need to be changed in the public education system in California: assessment metrics, lack of community partnerships and the need for a greater focus on social-emotional learning.

LA School Report asked Albert about what could be done better or what needs to change in the education system to allow reforms and innovation to take place in the classroom, as well as his goals for the 2019-20 school year. His answers have been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Why did you choose to teach at the high school level?

I was like initially, well maybe I can teach at the college level. Then when I thought about it further, I was like, well, if I teach at the college level and people that are coming from my community end up being my students, just the fact that they’ve made it to college is a huge deal. They’ve already overcome some huge major barriers. I want to target the ones that aren’t able to even make it to college, based on the barriers that they’re facing within the schooling system, within their community and to be able to help really move the needle in order to be able to do it in that manner. When I realized where it was I wanted my focus to be in order to change my community, then it became clear that in order for me to move the needle, I needed to teach at the high school level. Because from my experience, from hearing from my family members, and just what I was seeing in my old community, that was the area that it seemed at the time was failing my community the most.

What have you found in common with your students?

I think for me the biggest commonality that I share with them is that there is a huge need for students, especially African-American and Latino males, to receive motivation. As much as we purport to do our best, which we do as teachers, to revise curriculum, create curriculum, and to teach the materials that the state of California requires, there’s an intangible, almost critical need for motivation to also be built into the character of whoever the teacher is — male, female, whatever ethnicity — in front of the kids. I think that all kids, including me growing up, need motivation in order to either remind themselves of how strong they are and that they can do it, whether it’s an older student or a younger student, that regardless of whatever situation or your socioeconomic status, your immigration or citizenship status, that this is an opportunity that you have the most control over, especially being under the age of 18.

• Read more: Teacher Spotlight: STEM Prep’s Daniel Lieu on removing racial barriers to STEM careers for his students, balancing rigor with caring and sharing snacks

What do you think are the main challenges your students face in school and in their communities and what do you do to support them?

For so many of my students, who are coming from families who are immigrating to this country, they’re being first-generation or trying to navigate through the citizenship process and the immigration process, which now that I know more about it is just extremely difficult to navigate through under the best circumstances. Then you have family members that are forced to move frequently as well. Huntington Park has a very transient population as well. So there are all these additional variables that make it cloudy sometimes for students, who are used to, unfortunately, dealing with trauma on a daily basis, to be reminded that there is motivation that’s available that’s within each of us, but sometimes you need people to help stir it and sometimes you need people to help build it.

Just having someone, or a group of people, whether it’s me, whether it’s a group of teachers, and all of the teachers at our school, we were placed in a situation where we all truly believe that about our students because it first starts with caring. Part of that caring is mentorship. A lot of teachers balk at the idea of mentorship, because technically as a teacher you’re not trained to be a mentor. It’s not part of your requirements in terms of your job description. And I get that, but we’re in a situation, especially in low-income urban areas, where mentorship is such a powerful tool. Even if it’s just something like a student seeing you at their games or having dinner with a student’s family to show that you’re invested, not just in them as a student at your school, but them as a person and what it is they’re capable of becoming. I think that’s a game-changer for a lot of students at our school, and especially our young Latino males. Our school is 99 percent Latino students.

Do you have enough support in your school or room to be innovative or do the things you need to do in the classroom to serve your students better?

The answer is a resounding yes. I really think that’s because we have a principal who truly stands behind that. Our principal would tell you that when she was the same age as our students, she literally had teachers tell her, ‘Don’t worry, you don’t really need to learn that. You just need to sit back in the back of the classroom and we’ll just make sure that as long as you’re not disruptive, then we’ll pass you with a C.’ Even now when she talks about it to this day, you can see in her mind that she’s reminded of how she felt as a student, as a person, as a woman, as an immigrant coming from an immigrant family of people who came to this country. And it’s real. So for us, one of the great things is that she allows us, whether it’s by departments or in our individual classrooms, to really figure out for ourselves what works best in our opinion for our students.

I’m one of the three teachers that’s currently on the executive board for the school. I’ve been on the executive board for going on almost five years now. So even at the highest level in terms of budget, in terms of LCAP (Local Control and Accountability Plan) and LCFF (Local Control Funding Formula) funding, we’ve had situations where we can say, ‘We need to hire a full-time psychologist. We need to hire another counselor because we noticed that there’s a lot of trauma that, as much as we can try to address it during class instructional time, you just can’t because you’re also instructing students based on a curriculum that you want them to learn to get them prepared for college and beyond.’

What kind of challenges do you currently face as an educator or what kind of issues in the public education system do you think need to be addressed?

If I had to narrow it down to three things, I’d say funding at the federal and state level is very heavily weighed on math and English scores. There are a lot of metrics that are just, unfortunately, not taking into consideration, that are going to be frustrating points for a lot of teachers, administrators, policymakers, all the way up the food chain. So I feel like number one, being able to effectively compare based on metrics coming from either state or legislative levels are always going to be a challenge until we really begin to have the true conversations about what really makes a school effective and what are all the components outside of the more traditional attendance rates and test scores on a standardized level.

Number two, I would say one of the things I think that is failing almost all public schools is a lack of community partnerships. A lot of schools are very bent on, ‘We need more money, We need more money,’ which is true. I will also argue that education from a public perspective is still drastically underfunded. But there’s also a great opportunity for communities, no matter what community you live in, to be more connected to the schools in order to provide more opportunities, whether it’s internships, whether it’s actual work experience, or whether it’s just plain exposure to either jobs or the careers that are available within that area.

And then the third component, I feel like that is failed, unfortunately, is the socio-emotional learning piece. There are so many schools that really, strictly based on funding, don’t have the resources in order to incorporate effective socio-emotional learning skills and personnel into the school workplace in order to help serve students that are walking around with all of this heavy trauma, that can’t even begin to process what’s being taught in the classroom until the trauma portion of their lives that they deal with on a day-to-day basis at home is dealt with.

I think if we attack those three, I feel like the world of education will be in a much better place. And there are many other things that could be mentioned, but I feel like in my heart as an educator, and as a person who’s been doing this now for going on five years, those are the things that I constantly see on a day-to-day basis that are things that I would want to change.

What do you think parents can do better to support teachers?

I would say just by following up with even their children on things like assignments that have recently been assigned. One of our big pushes was whenever we have a parent forum, one of the big things we do is at our school we provide the parents with their own login username and passwords to PowerTeacher, which is a tool where we house all of the grades for all students. So not only is it students being able to check their grades, but really empowering parents to be able to see based on labels, based on our numbering system, what assignments have been assigned that maybe are missing, meaning the student hasn’t turned it in, and what are the assignments that maybe have been turned in late, versus assignments that maybe were turned in on time and maybe students just didn’t do as well as they wanted to.

• Read more: I know how much this pandemic has devastated undocumented families because I grew up in one

A lot of parents either struggle with speaking English or are intimidated by a group of teachers who all speak English only. Or in addition to that, they’re working two jobs, or working three jobs, or they’re dealing with multiple children that they have, and so it’s not as if they don’t want to be more involved directly with teachers. But by empowering them to just give them the tools to check whatever is happening with their son or with their daughter, it helps bridge the conversation so that in the event that the teacher does want to message us, email us, or call us directly here at the school, that it creates a more comfortable environment where now they’re more knowledgeable. Now they know either what to ask or they know what it is that their son or daughter needs to do to improve academically … having a conversation with them so that your son or daughter can also learn how to become more accountable.

Being a TFA corps member, do you plan to continue teaching?

The Teach for America contract, in collaboration with the AmeriCorps Grant, requires that all Teach for America corps members stay at their school site that has been designated for a two-year term. I came in in 2015, my contract and term with TFA ended in 2017 and I’ve been here ever since. For me, I love teaching and one of the great awesome things about our school is every TFA corps member that has come through our school has stayed after their two-year commitment. TFA has been criticized on both sides of the fence. They’ve been criticized because teachers come in and they leave. They’ve been criticized for teachers coming in and supposedly not being as trained or dedicated as teachers who’ve gone through a more traditional credentialing program. And I understand the criticism from both sides.

One of the things I’ve also been able to do within TFA is bringing those concerns so that we can change the program for Los Angeles to make it so that teachers are coming in being as prepared as possible based on them moving into this new career of teaching. That’s been my angle, but I also feel like as an educator, once I started teaching, I understood that although I love teaching, that my focus shifted to being able to go from impacting students that were in my class to wanting to impact students that were in multiple classrooms across multiple school sites.

Would you like to pursue other paths in education?

I was able to do a fellowship through LAUSD with Nick Melvoin in Board District 4, and what I learned from that was there are all these major decisions that are impacting millions of students that I wanted to be a part of, to be able to positively impact their lives and their communities outside of just my immediate community at my school site. I want to be able to influence them for the betterment of the community, many other communities and many other students as a result. So this year, I am planning on taking the CPACE (California Preliminary Administrative Credential Examination)exam so that I can become an administrator at some point in the near future with the hopes of being able to potentially be a superintendent, or work at the district office, or be in a position to where I’m able to influence either policy and/or instruction at a larger scale.

I also decided to go back to school to get my doctorate in education and so I’ll be finishing my doctorate in the education program at USC in 2021. What I desire to do now is to take the experiences that I’ve had as a teacher and now use them to expand that knowledge, that insight, that perspective into a larger arena.

What is your main goal or goals for this school year? 

As a teacher, I want to increase the percentage of my students turning in quality work on time. And so one of my individual goals for my classrooms is I want to raise my classwork and homework being turned in, their on-time percentage, to 85 percent by the end of the year. So we started out the semester at 65 percent, we’re now at 72 percent going into now almost the end of February. So we’re slowly climbing.

As part of that initiative, I’ve become more proactive in sending out notifications to parents. Also, increasing my frequency of calling parents. So, I try to call at least 30 parents a week to let them know, give them updates on their kids, because parents like to hear about how their children are doing, especially for those children who are struggling the most with turning in their work. Those are the ones that I typically target first and so far, it’s working.

Number two, trying to get students involved more with major decisions that are happening with the school. So one of the recent changes that we’ve had is we’ve had a reconfiguration of our executive board where now we have two students who are represented on the board who have just as much power as we as board members do. So really encouraging the students to speak up and just speak their mind, so really trying to empower students to have a stronger voice and to be more comfortable being able to understand that their voice matters.

And then I think the third thing that I would say that I’m focused on is really trying to get students, especially seniors, to hone in on their ability to become critical analyzers. So taking information that we’re seeing that’s coming from anywhere — news sources, newspapers, information that we’re seeing that’s coming from people making statements. … So really trying to get the seniors, especially, to think outside of the box. They’re very, unfortunately, accustomed to taking things at face value, which is good, but being able to help them read between the lines and to understand everything that is being said or everything that they’re reading, whether it’s a text, whether it’s information that they’re trying to craft or having to put together for a debate that we’re having in our class. But being able to really hone those skills in order to make them successful after they leave us and go on to college next year.

Suzanne Nagata teaches kindergarten, first and second grade at Citizens of the World Charter School Mar Vista. (CWC)

Suzanne Nagata was not aware of the kind of a unique educational upbringing she had until after she graduated from UC Berkeley and went to Japan to teach English as a second language for three years.

“That’s when I really realized, ‘Oh wow, my cultural upbringing was not the same as most people know,’’’ she said, referring to the progressive school she attended as a child. So when Nagata discovered Citizens of the World Charter SchoolMar Vista, in West Los Angeles, she quickly decided that she wanted to be part of its similarly progressive education model, where the students’ social-emotional learning and diverse cultural immersion form the foundation of the school’s mission.

“When I found CWC, … they’re doing everything that is just so fully aligned with my educational philosophy, in terms of SEL and academics and the ability to have arts integration,” she said. “And the social justice piece also was really important to me.”

After getting her teaching credential at California State University Northridge, she became a founding teacher at an Aspire charter school in South LA nine years ago. She was also a founding lead teacher at Los Angeles Unified School District’s Spanish Immersion Program at Broadway Elementary, before joining CWC, where she has been teaching kindergarten, first and second grade for the past three years.

• Read more: Intentionally Diverse Charter Schools: At Citizens of the World, Community Engagement and Students’ Own Backgrounds Are the Foundation for Academic Success

Nagata says that the social-emotional learning part is what she really appreciates the most. Before teaching she had training as a massage therapist and she is bringing that “mind-body awareness” to her young students in the classroom.

“Our school does a lot of meditation. I do yoga with my kids and really try to get them aware of what’s happening. Especially in the younger grades, I think it really helps them to get a sense of who they are.”

LA School Report asked Nagata about what could be done better or what needs to change in the education system to allow reforms and innovation to take place in the classroom, as well as her goals for the 2019-20 school year. Her answers have been lightly edited for length and clarity.

When did you realize you wanted to be a teacher?

Well, my second grade teacher told me and my parents, ‘Suzanne’s going to be a teacher.’ But I’ve always had a very rebellious spirit and I was like, ‘No, no.’ So I was kind of always trying to figure out what else I could do. Ever since I was in fourth grade, I started as a TA in summer school classes and I was always teaching something. So, you know I taught puppetry and I did SAT prep. When I was in high school, I was a mentor for little kids and I was a camp counselor. I was always doing teaching, even when I was in college. When I went to Berkeley, I volunteered in elementary school classes and I did SAT prep in low-income schools and in Oakland.

What do you like the most about teaching at Citizens of the World? 

There’s so many reasons. Well first, you know, the educational philosophy here. The fact that it’s progressive, everything’s hands on. I love our inquiry-based approach. So, the way that we do our social studies curriculum is through something called inquiry where it’s really focused on social justice in terms of bringing in current events. We really tie everything to student interest. So we’ll introduce ideas and then based on what they are really interested in, what peaks their interest in that, we do projects. So we’re also project-based here. Instead of just learning content, students are really making it meaningful and real world. So for example, one year we were talking about communities and in first grade … the idea of homelessness became really of interest to them.

And so at a first grade level we were able to build a project around writing a song about homelessness after we learned about it. And that was awesome because we got some recognition from the mayor’s office and so they came out and that was really exciting for the kids to see that their interests and their work could then move out into the world and have an effect to the level of the mayor’s office coming out. At the higher grades, last year, I think it was fourth grade, they realized that we have the crosswalk in front of our school and they felt like that wasn’t safe enough. So they contacted Mike Bonin, who’s our City Council member, and then they worked with him. I don’t know the details, but I do know that now we have a crosswalk light and they redid some of the crosswalks so that it’s accessible. So it was really exciting for those kids to see that the concerns that they had actually had an effect on the world around them.

• Read more: Teacher Spotlight: Excelencia’s Amber Lewis on getting 81% of her students proficient in math, why teaching is harder than it looks and making sure her kids never feel failed by the system

How does the social-emotional curriculum model work in your classroom?

So the social-emotional part I feel is kind of the foundation of our school. Everything we do, everyone who works here understands that. Those social-emotional skills of being able to find how we interact with people and understanding ourselves and understanding the cultural context of each other. I think that’s something that everyone’s always thinking about in terms of even how we teach math. But we also have very specific things that we do in class. So we have a curriculum that explicitly teaches how to notice somebody who’s having different feelings and how to communicate those feelings. Because in younger grades, they still need to learn how to express themselves. We also use restorative justice and circle ways. So restorative justice is kind of a whole program and something called responsive classroom, but it’s all about how to bring in social-emotional learning and awareness into the classroom through different activities. So for example, we start the day with the kids just talking about things that they’re interested in. And so, the other kids really are able to make connections and they know how to listen to each other. We also do counsel, which is kind of a sacred time where you’re speaking from the heart and you’re talking about issues and sometimes that’s how we solve issues.

You mentioned also diversity as one of the foundations in your school, how is that an important part of students’ learning?

Yeah, I love that our school is diverse by design because I think it just really opens up their mind when they understand. I mean empathy and inclusion is the direction for society to really reach understanding, about all the issues that are happening in the world. Empathy and inclusion are really kind of the big overarching of ideas that we need our kids to have, so that when they move out into the world, they see things through those lenses. If they’re not exposed to differences, they don’t understand other cultures. A big part of the social- emotional piece is that we’re a part of society and we want to be changemakers. We want to be effective members. It affects the citizens or members (of that society). And a big part of that is having respect for others, being able to communicate in a way that other people will understand you and understanding each other culturally, I think is kind of the base of all that.

What are you currently doing in the classroom that you think is kind of unique or innovative?

It’s the school model. I think it isn’t unique to me because I went to a progressive school, so sometimes I forget that it’s like, ‘Oh yeah, they don’t do this in other classrooms.’ But I think I have to kind of jump into the mind of a person who had traditional schooling. So I guess there’s a few things I would say. Maybe I will tell you what I thought was something that I haven’t heard of. When you talk about the mindfulness of that student being aware of themselves, I think that’s something unique that I haven’t heard from other educators.

So we practice that through just learning how to check in with yourself, which is like we practice breathing, we introduce all different kinds of mindfulness practices. We have a whole curriculum that we use, but on top of that it’s called mind app and that just introduces students to the idea that there are different ways to pay attention to things. So it helps them learn how to quiet their body and quiet their mind so that you just notice what’s happening because sometimes we are just reacting to things and we’re not even really aware of what’s happening. So just taking breaths, which is kind of what we say is like when you take a breath, that’s something that is always happening inside your body and it’s something that is you. It’s not something else, right? It’s your breath. It’s different than other people’s. So the breathing practices are really important.

Like for example, this morning the students came in and they were really wild and which is fine. That’s how it is. You know, there was just a lot of energy. I said, ‘Oh, let’s start with the mindful moment’ and my students know as soon as I say that, it’s OK, I don’t have to pay attention to anything else but my breath and they can close their eyes, which is also something I think is not happening a lot in school. It’s amazing when the students can see just from two minutes of just checking in with yourself and being with your breath, for them it’s profound. They get to have their own experience of how they can affect the whole classroom just by being responsible for themselves. It is beautiful. Students love it.

• Read more: What’s an emotion scientist? Inside the new concept shaping social-emotional learning

What do you think are some of the issues that need to be addressed in the public education system in California?

Mental health… because our school was so focused on SEL, the social-emotional learning, and a big part of that is understanding your own feelings. I just think that’s still related to mental health. That a lot of the mental health issues are happening because we’re not aware of what’s really happening. You know, I think it’s as easy as doing a little more mindfulness in class. I think something that is so great for our kids also is using something called the peace path, which comes from restorative justice.

I think a lot of mental health is, ‘I don’t understand myself. I don’t understand what’s happening in the world,’ and that disconnect between who you authentically are and what’s happening around you and the lack of control. I think that’s what mental health is all about.

How do you think parents and the community in general can better support teachers?

I feel like on an individual level communication is really the most important thing. I wish I had some kind of big political thing to say. I think no one knows their child better than a parent and I think just being willing to communicate with the teachers about what’s happening and what you know about your child can really make the biggest difference because we spend half of their life with them in the classroom. You know, it’s like you get them half time, we get them half time or maybe we even spend more time with your child, but (they) spend their whole life with them. So for me, I just feel really knowing that teachers want that communication.

What’s your main goal for this school year? 

I have some big goals. One of my main goals is to increase, do more arts integration in the classroom because it’s just through the arts that I think children feel confident, can explore creativity and I think it brings out a whole different side of kids and I think it’s such a great way to access the curriculum. It’s a great way to access information and learning.

Personally, I just want to do more arts integration because I’ve seen how it can engage kids who aren’t engaged, like if it’s just straight academics, which you don’t really do in a progressive model in general. I just think it brings in so many great things, for example, such as problem solving, in a meaningful and real way, that I think is kind of the basis of what we want to be teaching kids is problem-solving skills. I also always want to be supporting more teachers. I’m really big on communication, teachers working with other teachers, because I think teachers have so much knowledge and they do such amazing things in their classrooms, that if teachers can have the time to share those things that they’re doing, I think it helps the kid so much.

Daniel Lieu

Daniel Lieu is just 22 years old but he’s already certain that he chose the right profession as a STEAM teacher, serving mainly low-income minority students in South Los Angeles. He believes race or ethnicity should not be a determinant for whether students become engineers or scientists. Lieu thinks what they need is to be exposed to STEAM — science, technology, engineering and mathematics —experiences early on in life and in school.

Lieu is in his second year teaching at Math and Science College Preparatory, a charter high school that is part of the STEM Prep Schools, where he teaches engineering to juniors and seniors using project-based learning..

“I think project-based, is really where you learn more because it’s challenging to a different level. You have to problem-solve, you have to be creative, you have to work around solutions and that’s what is important in the real world. So it’s super important.”

• Read more: Do Standards and Project-Based Learning Go Hand in Hand? Prof. Nell Duke Says Yes, & Looks at the Best & Worst of PBL

Lieu learned to love the teaching profession from his mom, who was a public school teacher in Lawndale, where he also attended charters schools. He said that he grew up watching his mom enjoying her job. While in college he initially planned to go to medical school, but decided instead to pursue teaching and ended up graduating from UC Irvine with a bachelor’s degree in biology and his teaching credential.

“Because of the STEM teachers shortage, there’s a lot of programs where you can actually do a bachelor’s and a teaching credential so I was in a program called the Cal Teach,” he said. “I began to realize that this is actually what I wanted to do because I saw how happy my mom was as a teacher, just coming home and I was like, ‘I want a job that is satisfying in the sense that I get to help people and I also enjoy what I do.’”

At STEM Prep, over 80 percent of the student population is Latino.

A recent study found that though black and Latino students show a strong interest in pursuing a STEM degree, they drop out of college programs at a higher rate than their white peers. One reason highlighted by the researchers is that low-income families have less access to STEM academic resources.

Lieu thinks that’s very much what happens in communities like those where his students are growing up. But he also strongly believes those statistics can change.

“I think it really depends on how much exposure they have because growing up they may not have exposure to professionals or family members who are in STEM,” he said. “I do definitely see that they want to be the future STEM professionals and they have to know that they can be … telling them that they can is the first step.”

LA School Report asked Lieu about what could be done better or what needs to change in the education system to allow reforms and innovation to take place in the classroom, as well as his goals for the 2019-20 school year. His answers have been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Why did you choose to teach in this community?

The purpose of why I wanted to be a teacher was to really, whatever job I went to, I just wanted to make a difference in somebody else’s life because I know personally, that’s what brings me joy. If I could have that satisfaction, then I know that whatever job I’m in, I’d be happy. I grew up with a lot of friends who are from low-income environments and I saw what they had to overcome and how the teachers helped them overcome it, and I wanted to be a part of that motivation and that change for other people. So I chose a community where it was close to home and also in a population that I felt would bring me that satisfaction of knowing that I am making a change in the world.

How important is innovation in your teaching in order to have positive student outcomes?

I think the school highlights innovation in the sense that they want this school to be training the future STEM professionals. So my lessons are very engaging in that they’re hands-on, so how much … if they’re doing circuits, so it’s very hands-on in the things that prepare them and show them that they can be an engineer. I think innovation is important in the classroom to show students that they can do things of the future and that require creativity. You have to bring creativity into your lessons. … I always ask myself the question, ‘How can I show them that they can be engineers and scientists?” A lot of that requires innovation through my lessons.

Teaching overwhelmingly Latino students at your school, how do you support their interest in STEM careers?

To be honest, I think anybody can be into STEM regardless of what race, what ethnicity they are. I think it really depends on how much exposure they have because growing up they may not have exposure to professionals or family members who are in STEM. I’m going back to those statistics. They may not see these and because of that, they may not see themselves as STEM thinkers. They may not see that they can be engineers and scientists, so I think that in education, there’s huge importance in showing them that they can. In my lessons, I incorporate a lot of that, and if you look at my classroom, they’re really engaged.

So they’re all very into the circuits, into building it, and at this school, I think that the push of ‘you can be a scientist, you can be an engineer’ is hopefully encouraging that idea in these students.

What do you think your school’s leadership is doing right in setting up teachers for success?

I think the support because we’re a small school and because we’re a small school, I think that we have access to a lot of people and resources. There’s a lot of coaching, so observations happen very often. We’re constantly observed or we’re constantly evaluated in the sense that we’re not judged, but we know that they want to make us better educators. So it just doesn’t feel like judging. It feels like the school wants to push us to be better teachers for our students. I think that’s the greatest strength. The coaching model at this school and the supports that you get. I think I’ve grown a lot because of that. They record you and it’s not like, ‘Look at what you did.’ It’s a, ‘OK, so how can we grow from this?’

What do you think the school district or the state can do differently to bring more teachers into the profession and particularly into STEM?

I think one thing that I’ve noticed is that STEM can be inclusive, but I think that STEM extends beyond just the science, technology, engineering, math. I think all the other subjects are important because a part of STEM is knowing how to understand texts. Part of STEM is knowing how to write, how to read, how to be creative, and that’s in the arts. So I think that bringing other subjects and highlighting them as important aspects of STEM too can help.

I think at a district level and even a state level, they’re pushing STEM a lot and that’s important. STEM is extremely important for the future and I think that’s also important to highlight the arts and the humanities because that is a critical support to STEM.

• Read more: The Great STEM Debate: States Can’t Agree on What Those Four Letters Mean, and That’s a Problem

What do you think parents can do to help STEM teachers better?

I think to support their student because part of the student’s growth is from the teachers, from the school and the parents, so it’s teamwork. It’s a team effort between the parents, us and the student, so we have to work well together. I think understanding the student, working with them to improve, so that could be through asking them how their school day was. I think that plays a big role in the student’s interest in school, too. The participation of the parents for us — the more that we communicate with the parent, the more that we can understand the student. The more that the student communicates with their parent about school, the more they may be pushed toward talking about, ‘Well, what do you want to do?’ It’s like, have you tried going to, let’s say, the California Science Center right down the street (to find) resources and support.

What’s been one of your greatest accomplishments so far?

I think that they all fall under the theme of … character development, like TV shows, The Office, Friends, all of these sitcoms have good character development. So, I like to see when my students go from either really shy or reserved and eventually they start opening up inside the classroom and that’s when I know that I’ve created an environment that’s open. I feel like this year I’ve created that more, created that space where I’ve seen students go from quiet to participating and talking to other people. I think just seeing the character development in the classroom of my kids. I’m glad that there’s a space for them to feel like they can be confident in themselves.

• Read more: Teacher Spotlight: Excelencia’s Amber Lewis on getting 81% of her students proficient in math, why teaching is harder than it looks and making sure her kids never feel failed by the system

What’s one of your main goals for this school year?

This year my goal is to learn how to balance teaching with also spending enough time to care for my students because I think sometimes you can teach, but you forget to care for the students. I have this power struggle where sometimes I’ve cared a lot for my teaching — wondering, I am pushing enough content or pushing enough rigor — but sometimes I feel like I can be too rigorous and then forget to care as much for my students. So I want to balance that. How can I care for them a lot and also push them with a lot of rigor, how can I be both? We just had professional development on how to love your students and that was super applicable to my goal this year.

What did you learn from it?

That students have different love languages just like how we have different love languages, understanding each of my student’s love language. So for example, something that was brought up by the person leading the development was, if they offer you a snack that might be their way of opening up to you. I’m used to just saying no, it’s OK just all the time, but I’m realizing that’s their way of showing love to me. So, I’ve started taking it and I’ve seen their face light up because now they feel love because I took their gift. And the same way, if I know that they like snacks, I can offer them back as well.

I think that there’s a shift and like they’re more likely to participate in class and try to put a lot of effort into an assignment when they know that I care about them because they know that I’m not out to get them, or I’m out to get them to fail. I want them to do better and they know that. I think because of that, I’ve seen results in that they’re coming to my office hours to get tutored, more open to seeking help. I allow them to retake assessments mainly because I don’t believe the first one should dictate where you are. So if they understand the content a month later, it took them an extra month, but they understand the content. I’ve seen them take tests that are a month out, so a month later they’re still trying to learn stuff that they didn’t do well on the first time and their test scores improved a lot because of that. A lot of them went from a 1out of 4 — t’s a 1 through 4 grading system — in a matter of months just coming, seeking more tutoring help and things like that. When you give them the opportunity to try and improve, they definitely improve.

As a former charter student and now as a charter school teacher, from your own experience, what would you like people to know about charters schools?

I think one big thing for me is knowing that the goal of every teacher — public, charter, private — is that we all want to see students improve. … I feel like sometimes with the political climate and just the thoughts that revolve around the word charter, we forget that teachers want to see students improve and students want to improve. Yes, there’s a whole political argument over it and it’s important to discuss, but it’s also important to know that we are here for our students.

• Read more: Teacher Spotlight: Napa Street’s Polly Buller-Ulm on encouraging parents of special-needs students to ‘dream big’ for them

Kyle Perez-Robinson with the students she mentors

Having the privilege of receiving abundant support from teachers and family throughout her life, Kyle Perez-Robinson thought it was her duty to choose a profession in which she could give back to society. She decided to become a doctor and enrolled in pre-med in college, but one day she realized teaching was the way she could really have a bigger impact.

“If I think of the people who really helped shape me to be the person that I am today, I always think back to my teachers,” said Perez-Robinson, who is in her second year teaching at Ednovate East College Prep in downtown Los Angeles. “And so it kind of hit me that if I wanted to be someone who can have an impact on young people and help them gain access to the things that they deserved, then teaching was probably the place for me.”

Perez-Robinson graduated with a bachelor’s degree in human biology and a minor in education from Stanford University and got her master’s degree from Loyola Marymount University. She is teaching ninth-grade biology at Ednovate East, where she was placed through Teach for America, a nonprofit that recruits recent college graduates to teach for two years in low-income schools across the country.

She says the part of her job that makes her particularly excited is working closely with 19 female students as their advisor, a role she’ll have throughout their four years of high school.

It’s a distinct opportunity, Perez-Robinson said, for both her and her students, as she works to become the adult figure the girls feel close enough to to help them through challenging situations while also making sure they’re ready for college — that they’re tracking their grades, monitoring their own behaviors and learning how to advocate for themselves.

“I think that space is really unique and I know I certainly didn’t have that in high school,” she said. “I love how we do advisories because I know I’m very close with all of my girls … I think that’s something that really sets our students up for success because they have somebody who is there just for that. While at bigger schools you can sometimes get lost, and we make sure that doesn’t happen here.”

Most importantly, Perez-Robinson said, she is passionate about helping her students get enough confidence that they can pursue STEM programs in college and become future scientists.

LA School Report asked Perez-Robinson about what could be done better or what needs to change in the education system to allow reforms and innovation to take place in the classroom, as well as her goals for the 2019-20 school year. Her answers have been lightly edited for length and clarity.

You are two years into your teaching career, how is your experience been so far?

I love teaching so much. I definitely think I am teaching the correct age group. I think ninth- graders are the coolest kids ever. They’re right at that age where they’re still OK being wacky and goofy with you, but they also can have elevated conversations just about how the world works and things that they think need to change, which is really amazing. So I absolutely love teaching ninth-graders as a whole.

Even more so, I’m really passionate about teaching science. The persistence rates for Latinx students in college in STEM programs are really low when you compare them to their white peers and there’s a lot of research on it. It’s not entirely known why that’s happening. But as I’m teaching science to all of my students, I know that they’re so capable of being scientists in the future, of having careers in STEM and I really want to be the type of person who can share that with them, and make them feel encouraged, and give them the self-esteem in science that they need in order to pursue those things.

So I get really excited when students get excited about science and it happens a lot so I get to nerd out with them, and it makes me so happy. But I do feel so privileged and grateful that I look forward to my job every day. Breaks are really hard for me, summer breaks, because I just really miss the kids. They have so much life and so much potential that it’s amazing to be able to have a part or play a role in all of the developing that they’re doing, because I know they’re going to be so successful. So I’m just honored that I’m able to be part of that journey with them.

Can you share more about your students, their demographics, their challenges and their strengths?

So most of our students identified as Latino students. A lot of them are native Spanish speakers. We also have some students who identify as black. We have very, very, very few students who identify as white. So something that’s been super amazing is as an advisor, I’m responsible for doing all the parent conferences with my advisees. So I know their parents really well now, and I think that’s an incredible thing that Ednovate does because we’re building that (school) community. A lot of students are coming from low-income households, which is we can see that through our free and reduced lunch data. I don’t know the exact number, but I do know it’s a really high proportion of our students. Some of our students live in the projects. I know a lot of our kids, I’m thinking of one advisee in particular, she isn’t really allowed to do extracurricular activities because her mom is nervous about her being outside when it’s not light anymore. So a lot of them are facing a lot of unique challenges, which, to be frank, I came from a really privileged background comparatively and so they’re things that I’ve never had to go through before. A lot of my advisees’ parents are undocumented, and they’re dealing with very specific issues. One of them has health issues, and I’m trying to support them through that, but it’s really difficult.

So I think ultimately our students are students who have a lot of grit, and perseverance, and so much resilience, and also a lot of pride. So I moved here from Northern California, and I went to a predominantly Latinx school as well and I identify as Latina. But I think there’s something about our school or maybe something about L.A., where our students are really proud of their heritage. They’re happy to use Spanish in class. It’s really amazing to see how happy they are to integrate their culture into their every day, and also how our school supports them in that and encourages it.

● Read more: Teacher Spotlight: Excelencia’s Amber Lewis on getting 81% of her students proficient in math, why teaching is harder than it looks and making sure her kids never feel failed by the system

What kind of unique or innovative things is your school doing in serving these students?

I think the primary thing is that we’re providing them with the same opportunities that a lot of students in more affluent areas are getting that sometimes this demographic isn’t given. For example, all of our students have computers that they use in class. I think when I think back on my experience in college, I definitely experienced a lot of imposter syndrome. I think having some technological literacy would’ve been helpful and I think that’s something we help them with.

Another really amazing thing about our school is the idea of PMC. We call it positive multi-generational change and that’s our goal for all of our students: that they’re able to contribute to their community in a positive way and not just for this generation, but for the generations ahead of them and also for the people who are supporting them. They’re contributing positively to their parents, who are providing so much for them to be able to go to school. The way that we break that down is freshman year, focusing on knowing yourself. Sophomore year, the focus is on knowing your community. Junior year is on knowing your nation, and senior year is on knowing your world. We culminate their PMC with a year-long project as seniors where they have to figure out some sort of issue that they’re passionate about and sort of contribute positively to whatever that issue may be.

We focus on that a lot with our advisory. So like I mentioned, my girls are sophomores right now and we spent freshman year with them figuring out how to be high schoolers. Now we’re looking at, ‘OK, what are you passionate about? What do you want to do?’ And so with our advisory, we have 35 minutes every morning and five minutes in the afternoon where we can develop projects about things that they might be interested in or careers that they want to pursue that are also related to supporting their community. So one of my advisees, for example, really wants to be a scientist and so she and I are working on developing some sort of project where she’s able to engage with either science students in college or with scientists who work at universities and interview them so she can figure out what that career path actually looks like and what type of work it entails.

Have you seen that tied to academic achievement?

Yes, completely. I think if I think of my advisory as a case story, I’m able to see what girls’ GPAs are, if they’re passing all classes at all times. Then they always show me their grades. Then we have different rewards, and parties, and stuff when everyone’s doing well. I think I’ve seen it happen in a couple of ways. One, if I can see that somebody is starting to fail a class, there is a set of people who are kind of roadblocks to keep that from happening.

I can also help them communicate with their teachers and learn the avenues to communicate these issues.

I’ve also seen, especially since last year, my girls … they’re always really eager to help those students who are falling behind. So if someone’s struggling with chemistry, another one is always so happy to, ‘Oh, I’ll help you. I’ll show you how to do this.’ And I think that because we have that designated space for that type of collaboration to happen with both teachers and other students, that they’re able to get the support they need before it becomes too late. I think we have a pretty low rate of students who are failing and I think that’s one of the reasons why.

How do you think the state or school districts could do better to support teachers for success? 

Oh my gosh, it is so expensive to become a teacher. So I went to a private university. I was used to it being expensive. So I went to Stanford, and they have a really amazing teacher education program, but the reason why I opted to do Teach For America was because I knew I would be able to get scholarships and subsidies from AmeriCorps when doing my teacher education program and that’s what I ended up having to do just because it made more sense financially. But even so, it’s really expensive. There are a lot of hidden fees. There are a lot of really pricey exams that I’m not sure are really assessing if I’m a quality educator or not as compared to they’re assessing how much busy work am I willing to do. And I think that that is kind of ironic, given that my classes are really amazing, and they’re telling me what quality assessments look like and then I feel like that’s not necessarily persisting for the teachers themselves. So I think that’s one thing. I do appreciate that it is very important to go into higher education or into graduate studies in order to do a specialized profession. I think that it’s necessary, but I think that given the costs of becoming a teacher, that I think — and I’m sure you hear this all the time — I think that compensation for teachers should be equivalent.

What do you think parents can do better to support teachers? 

It’s definitely a team. Again, I’m so privileged to have really great relationships with the parents, especially my advisees, and I’ve noticed the most success when parents and teachers are able to have those difficult conversations because we know that at the center of everything we’re doing, we want the kid to be successful. Maybe we have different ideas of how we’re going to achieve that, but ultimately we want to make sure that the student can fulfill all of their potential.

So I think that the first step to that is giving a platform for those conversations to take place in the first place. Our parent-teacher conferences are really valued and are super important and because of that, we have almost all of our parents attend. Our goal is always 95 percent attendance. I think that if there isn’t that face-to-face contact, it’s really difficult to feel accountable to one another; like if you’ve never met somebody, why are you going to do things for them? So I think that it’s really important for schools to set up that system where parents and teachers can meet each other and then they can come up with solutions for how to support students and follow through on them.

So I think with parents, it’s ultimately like, ‘Please don’t feel concerned about communicating because teachers really do appreciate that communication.’ And the responsibility, I think, is twofold. Parents, please communicate with teachers. Teachers, please communicate with parents.

● Read more: Teacher Spotlight: KIPP Iluminar Academy’s Mercedes Jimenez on preparing her 3rd-graders for college, why Latino parents are sometimes scared to ask questions and the goal charter and district schools share

What has been one of your biggest accomplishments as a teacher so far?

This is really hard because I think being in the classroom every day and just seeing, learning, and watching students from the beginning of the school year all the way to the end, and see how much they’ve grown is so incredibly rewarding.

I think watching my advisee students develop into mature young women has been amazing because there I started out with them as young freshmen and now they’re all turning 16, and they’re acting a lot older. That’s been really cool.

I’m also really proud because I am a member of some of our leadership teams. Specifically, I’m on an innovation team where we can figure out how to make our advisory program better, and it’s something that I’m so passionate about. I am really honored that I’m able to be a part of a group that is actively trying to improve one of my favorite parts of the school day.

What’s your main goal this school year?

That’s a fun question. I think my goal is that my students feel confident as scientists and feel capable as scientists and I don’t want there to be anything holding the student back from pursuing science unless they actually really don’t like it. I don’t want them to think that they can’t pursue science because they’re not smart enough, or because they can’t do the math, or because they are brown, or because they’re a woman. I want them to feel as if those barriers don’t exist for them so that they can achieve whatever they want to. If they don’t like it, that’s fine, but I don’t want them to think they can’t be scientists because of some sort of institutionalized barrier. So it really is just a privilege for me to be able to work with our students and I’ve learned so much from them. I know I teach them, but they also teach me so much every day about myself and about their community. It’s been really amazing.

Letting her students guide their own instruction and learning from each other has been one of the keys to success for novice teacher Amber Lewis, who is in her second year teaching at Excelencia Charter Academy and is already meeting her students’ growth goals.

Lewis is a founding teacher at Excelencia, an independent charter elementary school that shares a campus with a traditional L.A. Unified school in East Los Angeles. She said that being part of a starting charter school in an underserved neighborhood was what really attracted her to work for the school. She also thought in a school like that her ideas could be heard.

“So, it was just all of these different factors, like wanting to be able to bring ideas to a school that was brand new that I felt would listen to me. Wanting to see how the charter schools actually work. Doing my own type of research like: Are they even better? And obviously, going to a community that really needs higher education. So I was all for it at the time.”

She was also interested in the school’s two-teacher model. Though that has changed for the second school year, she believes the school’s model is innovative at the elementary level because it allows teachers to provide a tailored education and accelerate their learning growth.

“When students came into our school 20 percent of them were considered proficient in math based on a computer differentiated math test. Meaning they can count, they can add. And then, by the end of the year, 81 percent were proficient,” Lewis said. “Students just grew so much. Sure I worked really hard, but I also think we had a lot of the tools that we needed.”

She said she let her students guide their own instruction through hands-on learning and by fixing their own mistakes right away. “But I think the best way is for them to learn is from each other.”

Prior to Excelencia, Lewis was a substitute teacher and teacher assistant at a dual language immersion school in Alhambra. She graduated from California State University Fullerton where she earned a bachelor’s degree in child and adolescent studies and obtained her master’s degree in education from Azusa Pacific University.

LA School Report asked Lewis about what could be done better or what needs to change in the education system to allow reforms and innovation to take place in the classroom, as well as her goals for 2019-20. Her answers have been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Tell me a little bit about your students and the community you serve at Excelencia, what are some challenges they face?

Our community at Excelencia is almost 98 percent Latino or Hispanic, maybe even 100 percent. And with a high population of Hispanic or Latino (students), a lot of them came in as English language learners. So for me, I think that was one of the major concerns I had was the language barrier because I don’t speak Spanish. I am Hispanic, but unfortunately, I never learned Spanish. So that’s always been one of my biggest flaws. So that was one of my main concerns and that’s pretty much our demographics. And then the other one was, I don’t know if the percentage of how many students got preschool education beforehand. And if they did, what was the quality of the education, because when our students came in — so I’m basically teaching the same students I taught last year because last year I taught TK (transitional kindergarten that is meant to be a bridge between preschool and kindergarten) and K (kindergarten) and now, this year, I started teaching first grade. But last year when I had my students, I know about 75 percent of them were not able to count up to 10 at the very beginning of the school year. Some didn’t even recognize any alphabet letters. So it was very challenging. I thought, ‘Oh my goodness, how are we going to reach these massive goals that we set for ourselves to help the students?’

And did they meet their growth goals? 

Oh, absolutely. I think that was part of my selfish reasons to move up with the first-graders because I taught them these math skills. I want to see if I left any gaps in between kindergarten to first grade, or are they going to just keep thriving? Did I do my job? Did I prepare them for first grade? So, now as their first-grade teacher they have just blown my mind. It’s really amazing to see how much they’ve grown. In all aspects, not just reading and writing. It’s phenomenal!

I understand Excelencia has a two-teacher model, how’s your experience been so far working under this model?

Well, the first year was completely different. The model itself and how our school operated is completely different from this year. So last year, we had two kindergarten and transitional kindergarten combo classes, and there were two literacy teachers at all times that taught literacy. And then it was me by myself, and I taught math, science, and social studies. So I went from one class in the morning and taught them math, science, social studies. And then after lunch, I would swap with the literacy teachers, and I would teach the second class math, science and social studies as they were teaching the first literacy. So it was just, a swap after lunch. So I had about 40 to 48 students that I was teaching the first year. And then this year, we are now your more traditional self-contained classroom. So now I have my own classroom all day instead of just in the morning and then swapping to a second class in the afternoon. So now I’m in my own class all day. I’m teaching them all subjects. So now I’m also teaching reading, writing, along with math, science, social studies. I do like it a lot. I think it gives me more autonomy in my classroom and definitely fewer students to manage and teach. Now, I have a class of 20 where last year, as I said, I had about 48 students. So it’s a little bit more manageable, or actually a lot more manageable to give these students all of me instead of just being exhausted by the end of the day because I’m now working with a whole new set of students with so many other different personalities.

So would you say that Excelencia is still offering an innovative school setting in comparison to other traditional elementary schools in the neighborhood? 

Well, so far our literacy portion … So even though we have our own classrooms, we’re still kind of doing the two-teacher model. I have one first-grade classroom that’s all mine. And then I have another co-teacher who came back from last year. She was also a founding teacher last year and she was one of the reading teachers. She’s also teaching the second first-grade classroom. So between us, we both have about, I think she has 19 students and I have 20 students. And so, based on our students’ scores and needs, we kind of have them do the shifting around this time. So last year for reading, the teachers were the ones that moved classrooms. This year, we’re having our students go to specific classrooms. So each team of reading teachers teach within specific levels so that each kid is having, basically a tailored education.

What’s the main reason why you wanted to become a teacher?

Well, I think it was back in 2010. I’ve always loved kids first of all, and I would always pretend I was the teacher or the (school) principal. So I declared my major as an undergrad in child development, and with that, I had to start taking classes and doing observations in the classrooms. So, just being in the classroom, I just started feeling like, ‘Oh, this is me. I like this, it’s fun, it’s cute. The kids are so cute.’ I had been more in day cares and kindergarten classrooms. And then, afterward, I was, ‘OK, this is not challenging enough.” Just basically watching them, taking care of them. Because I worked at a day care for a while and I just felt like I wasn’t making a difference with these particular kids out of day care and I felt like I wasn’t challenging myself enough. So I was talking to my fiancé at the time and he was just like, ‘Why don’t you try going back to school and getting your master’s?’ And so I was like, ‘Yeah, I don’t know if I could do it. What if it’s not right for me? What if it’s going to be too hard?’ And I was like, ‘You know what, I’m just going to do it. If I get accepted into this program, I’ll go for it.’

And I did, and along the way, again doing more student teaching and observations, I just realized, OK, this is for me. There is a reason why I decided to apply for grad school, and I got in. And then, I started to get more into the classroom, helping develop lesson plans, and actually executing them and just working with kids, in general, is always so fun. It’s tiring, it’s exhausting, but at the end of the day, I love how they’re so excited to learn. And just how much they want to please you as a teacher, and prove to you that they can do it. And you believe in them. It’s just a great feeling overall.

• Read more: Teacher Spotlight: KIPP Corazon’s Michelle Torres on preparing students to navigate the system better than she did, championing restorative justice and appreciating her trusting parents

What do you think is a major difference between preparing to become a teacher and actually being in the classroom?

So, when I was doing my observations, obviously I wasn’t the main teacher, so all the responsibility wasn’t on me. It was just kind of, more fun and a little bit of a playful type of experience. And then once becoming the actual main teacher it was like, ‘OK, it’s still fun, but it’s a lot harder than it looks.’ It’s not all fun. There’s definitely a lot riding on your shoulders and you’re just constantly putting a lot of pressure on yourself to make sure you’re covering all the basics with these kids and you’re giving them all you can so that they can keep growing and not just stay stagnant. It’s much harder. Just what everyone else says, too, like, ‘Oh, you’re off at 2:30. You get your summers off, vacation this and that.’ And it’s like, ‘Yeah, no, that’s not how it works.’ You’re still working on the weekends doing lesson plans or just making sure you have all your materials, that you’re mentally prepared, physically prepared. You’re staying later than what you’re contracted to stay. Over the weekend, or over the breaks, I find myself still like going on Pinterest and finding more ideas to like, ‘How can I help these students?’ So it’s a lot more than just a fun, playful job. It’s a lot of hard work. So I would say that’s a major difference.

What do you think the state or school districts should do better to support teachers for success?

So for our school (specifically), I’m not exactly sure how our funding works, but I know in the beginning stage for our startup, we were told, ‘OK make a list of materials that you guys need to help kids learn,’ like curriculum-related materials. So, it almost seemed like our budget was infinite. So at the time, we were able to order a lot of what we needed. I’m going to call it a need because I don’t think I would have been able to get my students where they were without them. So these cubic sticks, specifically for math, these cubic sticks, they’re put in groups of 10 and it just builds that base 10 knowledge. And I just don’t feel like other schools where I’ve worked at use this stuff, these types of manipulatives. And it could be like I said, a budget issue where they just don’t have the means to buy manipulatives.

But I just feel like if public schools had more funding or, these little things, it (would) make the biggest difference.

And I also think definitely staff training in specific subjects. I went to a specific training for two days and then we had a follow-up with the trainer to make sure we were implementing it the right way. And we got feedback if we were a little bit off and just how can we make it better. So all these follow-up trainings and coaching, I just feel is something that schools should definitely invest in.

What do you think is the best way parents can help teachers?

So right now I started implementing the ClassDojo app at or our school.

Because I used it before when I was a TA. For one, it translates. So parents will feel more confident because a lot of our parents aren’t English speakers so they’re able to communicate with me and it’ll translate what they’re saying to me, and vice versa. So for getting parents involved, lately we’ve just kind of been posting what we’re learning in the classroom and then giving them specific things they could work on with their child. So for example, for writing, we’re working on creating a full paragraph with a topic sentence, a body and then a closing sentence. So I posted a picture of the students doing that and then a brief caption saying, “We are working on writing full paragraphs. Please include: topic, body, closing sentence.” And so from there they kind of already see like, ‘Oh, this is what my child is learning. This is how I could support them.’

• Read more: ClassDojo Announces the Launch of Student Stories: A New Way for Students to Share Their Classwork

How does it make you feel when you hear attacks against charter schools given the fact that you teach at a charter school, and what would you like the public to know about your job at a charter school?

Well, when I got hired, I wasn’t aware of any sort of animosity with charter and district (schools). And then, toward our first day of school, the whole school opening, Mr. Alonzo (Ruben Alonzo, Excelencia Charter Academy’s founder and head of school) was informing us like, ‘Hey, by the way, we might have some protestors outside.’ And it was very frightening. I thought, ‘What do you mean? What? Why?’ They (protestors) think that charters, it’s privatization, and that we’re stealing their money. Just a lot of misinformed individuals. And so we were just like, ‘OK, well, what do we do?’ And (Alonzo) was like, ‘Just be friendly. Go on with your day. Don’t bother them and hopefully they won’t bother you.’

There’s still a lot of animosity with some of the teachers at the school where we’re co-located, but I think overall this year it’s gotten better. What I would want the public to know is really, educate yourself more. When they say, ‘There’s a lot of charter schools in LA, and to me, I don’t think there should be that many. It’s like, it kind of seems like one keeps popping open every year.’ But I think you just have to put the kids first and think: If the school is giving my child a better education, or children in general, a better education, why are we fighting them? Why do we want them to close? It’s free for the children to go there. So why do we keep fighting that?

That, to me, you just gotta put the kids first and just think: OK if this school is really doing better than the public school where this child would potentially have to attend, then why can’t I have an option to put my child in a better school?

What is one of your goals for this school year? Or your main goal for this school year?

So since I taught math mainly, along with science, and social studies, I feel more confident in my math teaching ability. So I guess my goal for myself, personally, would be to feel just as comfortable doing all of the other subjects — reading, writing, and just continue to keep these high statistics for our school. Like I said, I had 81 percent of my students be proficient in math and 90 percent of them met a growth goal that was projected for them. And so almost a 100 percent of my students met their growth goal and 80 percent are at proficiency. So just to keep these stats as high. I feel like that’s my goal. It’s just continue this growth and just keep giving the kids my all so that way they can have a great education and not feel like, ‘Oh, the education system failed me.’

Paulina Morales

For a history teacher like Paulina Morales, there has not been a better time than now to engage students in learning world history. The current political and social climate make the subject particularly relevant for her high school students in a heavily Latino community in South L.A., where many are the children of immigrant families and some are newly arrived to this country.

Her lessons this school year, for example, range from gun control legislation to the Me Too movement and immigration.

Morales teaches 10th-grade world history at Synergy Quantum Academy, a charter high school co-located at L.A. Unified’s Maya Angelou Community High School campus. Her nearly 20 years of teaching experience has been in charter schools, but she was a product of LAUSD. She also spent time studying in Mexico, the country where her parents emigrated from. She graduated from California State University Fullerton with a degree in anthropology.

While in middle school, Morales got her first glance at seeing herself as a history teacher, thanks to the influence of her own history teacher. It’s an effect she hopes to have on her own students, particularly her female students. She believes they live in a time with so many more choices and opportunities than she had growing up, thanks to the pride of being Latina women, which she didn’t experience openly when she was a student.

“I think that’s a big thing right now, as the girls in my classroom, or the women in my classroom, it’s important that they can definitely do it and things are changing for the better,” Morales said. “I love that my students are proud of who they are and they’re proud of their background, where they come from, and so it’s not something that, I guess when I was in school, maybe some people tried to hide who they were. Now, people are very proud of their culture, where they’re from.”

Morales credits that sense of pride to students’ access to ethnic studies and the culturally relevant books they’re reading now in class, but also to a spirit of resistance.

“Like I said, the president (Trump) right now is very, sometimes very anti-Latino in some of the comments he’s made, and that just makes them want to seek more knowledge, so that they can be prepared for those conversations,” she said. “They want that information, I think they want to be able to defend themselves and who they are.”

LA School Report asked Morales about what could be done better or what needs to change in the education system to allow reforms and innovation to take place in the classroom, as well as her goals for the 2019-20 school year. Her answers have been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Are your classroom lessons currently covering more social events than before?

Definitely, the new curriculum is engaging students more. I feel that during the first years of my teaching, it was more about world history with more European history, and now it’s actual world history, where we’re learning about ourselves. It’s more promoting the history of African cultures, Latino cultures, and we’re exploring more the women’s issues. In our history books, it’s very difficult to find women heroes, I would say. And now, it’s definitely in the newer books, there are even sections in every chapter about women heroes. So, it’s definitely changing a lot in the past couple of years. Now I have to teach history but through current events, and they have to really (think about) what’s going on today. So why is this happening today? What events happened in the past that are causing this to happen today? And they can relate a lot better to historical events in that way.

• Read more: 50 years after the Chicano Blowouts, still waiting for justice and the need to reject more police in our schools

Do you think you have less pressure than math teachers or ELA teachers to get results?

I feel like we have the same pressure, especially in my AP World History. It’s there’s always, or any AP teacher feels that pressure that you have to have a certain number of students pass (the AP test) or — not all of them — but it’s really difficult to pass those tests. And even, we also have to show that we’re teaching them certain standards, ELA standards, so we have to be supportive of, or teach them writing skills and things like that. So, I sometimes feel I’m their English teacher as well because we’re supporting one another in that aspect.

Is there anything in the public education system that you think should be addressed with urgency?

I think just the very anti-charter conversation is a very head-downer for us. We’re really trying to make a difference. I’m supportive of all LAUSD teachers because we share a campus with LAUSD schools, and we work together. So, I think we’re probably one of the only (colocated charter) schools that has an LAUSD school sharing the same campus that, for the most part, the majority of the teachers work well together. There are times where we’ve come together to meet common goals. I think their current principal, he’s doing a really good job at meeting with our principal, or our founder, and trying to get us to have more meetings that are combined because it’s the same community of students. Even that program, the Teen Court, we’re working together with them, and so they bring their students, we bring our students, and that’s a place where they get to meet one another. I think it’s a unique situation, so I feel we’re doing a good job at it, but it’s kind of difficult too. It must be difficult for other charters schools to have these negative conversations about them when all they’re trying to do is just, we’re all just trying to help students.

Tell me about the Teen Court program. What is it and what’s the purpose?

It’s new to our school. We have been doing it just for the past two years, both our school and Maya Angelou (LAUSD school). So, we started the program, the founder kind of connected us to this program and in order to get students to participate (they have to stay), for a month after school. We created a class called Trials That Made History, and the students there learn about the law, like how to become a lawyer, how to become a judge and things like that, and then other related (legal) fields that I had no idea of. I learned a lot by teaching a class and then participating in Teen Court, where students actually visit a real courtroom in downtown L.A. then they come and perform Teen Court in school. They recreate what they learned. It’s just exposing them to other careers and a lot of the students are really looking into becoming immigration lawyers. I have three seniors who have been part of the program since the beginning and now that’s one of the career ideas that they think they’re going to go into. So, that’s kind of cool.

What do you think is the most challenging about being a teacher? 

For me, what maybe I complain a little bit about, is sometimes you do have to take work with you home on the weekends. It’s not just you get out at 3 p.m. and then you’re home. No, because sometimes you have to stay, you definitely have to show students that you care and sometimes you do have to stay to gain or, for me, participate in Teen Court, and sometimes you have to be there until 7 p.m. Sometimes you have to go on your vacation to three-day trips with students so they can participate in a conference. So, you do give up a lot of your time too. And … just sometimes, the situations that students get into. They’re teenagers and they can make really huge mistakes that are life-changing, but we have to understand they’re teenagers, and they don’t really understand the severity of it until they’re there. So, (as a teacher) you have to be very forgiving.

• Read more: Teacher Spotlight: Daniel Helena brings his own experiences in helping retain more teachers of color in L.A. classrooms

What’s the best part of being a teacher?

Oh my God, my favorite day is always graduation day. It’s just watching them finally, they made it. To me, that’s my favorite day out of the year. It’s just showing up to graduation, seeing them at their best. Seeing them at those proud moments. Sometimes I have dinner dates with ex-students, they want to see you and tell you about what’s going on in their life. I guess those are my perks.

What do you think parents can do better in helping you to be a successful teacher?

As teenagers, sometimes they look like adults, they look like big kids, but they also need a lot of guidance, and parents still need to be on them to complete their homework or check on them. Are they doing their work? Even now, I would say take away the cell phone if they haven’t done the work, or they don’t have the grades. That’s a big distraction recently and there is a lot of, I don’t know, statistics out there, that say that their electronics are a big distraction. Even if they say, ‘I’m just listening to music, it helps me to concentrate,’ the studies are not showing that it’s helping them in class. But there also are a lot of things out there that are helping teachers stay connected with parents and I think we need to make more use of them. But if I send messages constantly to parents, they need to, hopefully, reply back, and show a little bit more involvement because I’m not sure if they’re getting the messages.

What’s your main goal for the current school year?

Well, as I said, I really love the Teen Court thing. Once I started that two years ago, my first day going to the first (one), I was, ‘Wow, this is amazing.’ I am so glad that I decided, that I said, ‘Yeah, I’ll take on this extra class, Trials That Made History, and now it’s like my favorite thing. It’s my last class of the day, so it’s the one thing that I have to look forward to at the end because it’s kind of new and innovative. I think teachers always need new things, or else it gets kind of, it drags on if you’re teaching the same thing over and over. So the Teen Court, that’s my new thing right now.

Michelle Torres

Michelle Torres never planned to become a teacher but her own struggles as a college student made her realize that through teaching, she could help young students to advocate for themselves early on and that convinced her to be in the classroom.

“I want to see these kids become successful, and get the resources, and be able to navigate the system better than I did,” said Torres.

As a founding teacher at KIPP Corazón Academy, an elementary and middle charter school in Southeast Los Angeles, Torres lead the creation of the school’s restorative justice advisory class in the school to help her students navigate a system she believes often plays against them.

“I find this class to be of great value because it allows my students to hear about counterstories that are not shared in our history books and allows them to feel that their voices matter and their stories do too,” Torres said.

• Read more: Teacher Spotlight: Rosalie Reyes celebrates Hispanic Heritage Month by creating Central American curriculum to bring that rich culture, history to the classroom

The majority of her students are Latino and live in low-income households like she did growing up. Her father was deported to Mexico when she was in fifth grade. Then her mother, who was also undocumented, became the family’s sole breadwinner and while they struggled financially, Torres and her three siblings focused on their education. But she, the youngest of the four, was the only one who made it to college.

“When I was offered the chance to go to UC, I knew I had to take it,” she said. “One, for myself and for my family, but two, for my brother, who didn’t have access to it because he had to help support our family.”

As a Latina college student, Torres said she had to face many challenges she wasn’t ready for. After switching her major, she graduated from UC Santa Barbara with a degree in Chicano studies and a minor in applied psychology. Now as a teacher, Torres says she feels a responsibility to help her students and their families be ready for some of those challenges, like overcoming stereotypes.

“I loved the experience of working with families and students who are of similar background as me. I felt like I was able to build really strong relationships with the students and families,” said Torres, who began teaching at a KIPP school in San Diego in 2014 through Teach for America. “One, because not only do I look like them and I speak their language, but culturally we were just very similar.”

LA School Report asked Torres about what could be done better or what needs to change in the education system to allow reforms and innovation to take place in the classroom, as well as her goals for the 2019-20 school year. Her answers have been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Why is it so important for you to teach your students to advocate for themselves?

Advocacy is one of our biggest values. So we (at KIPP Corazon) have four values. That’s advocacy, curiosity, purpose and pride. Those are the things we focus on here, like advocating for the community and stuff like that. We work around ethnic studies and about integration.

As we add more grade levels, we want to work more on restorative justice, have that space for teachers to teach social-emotional lessons as well as cultural lessons. We have circles, it happens every day. We start off with a game and then we start with a question … and so getting in that circle, we’re able to address (questions) and have conversations. A lot of times, kids come into education with a mindset like, ‘Oh, I’m a bad kid,’ and there’s no such thing as a bad kid. There are bad actions that people decide to make, right. Now with these circles and community circles, it’s our responsibility to figure out why did this action happen in the first place. Because at the end, people are out here … they want to try their best and be good for everyone else and themselves. So we have to figure out, why are you starting actions and behaviors happening because there might be something behind the action that’s really going on. And you need to figure out the community. How could we support each other?

Why did you start a restorative justice advisory class in your school?

I knew that our principal was very passionate about restorative justice. So this is a restorative justice block (of classes), it’s pretty much an advisory class on Mondays and Wednesdays and Fridays of about 60 minutes and we do a lot of social-emotional learning lessons. So students can learn how to talk about their emotions in a more productive way. And we also had different lessons where we talked about the different identities and nationalities we come from. We talk about their culture, about other cultures and communities and we celebrate that.

• Read more: Analysis: What Two New Studies Reveal About Restorative Justice in Middle School — and How It Can Be Done Better

What keeps you motivated to keep teaching?

After being in this role for five years, you become a cheerleader for your students because they come with so many social-emotional needs, so many traumatic experiences that sometimes they don’t want to do their part. So you as an educator don’t have to take it personal, it’s not that they hate you, it’s more like there’s something else going on.

I think as educators it’s our responsibility to figure out what is it that the student needs and meet them there. Because I feel like that was the biggest mistake I made my first year. I was like ‘All these kids are against me. They don’t want to do the work. They think my class is boring. They hate it.’ I took a lot of things personal, but in reality, all these kids had so many things that they were coming in with every single day. I just needed to figure out how can we socially emotionally support these students and make them feel safer at school so that they can excel.

I really appreciate that in the community that I serve parents really trust teachers. They have so much faith in education. I know a lot of parents really rely on the teacher. So, I feel a lot of pressure, but it’s good pressure to make sure that I need to do whatever the parents need because at the end of the day, we have to share the work together to make sure that we support that student. So I think that’s something that I really value and I appreciate, that demographic in the community I’m serving right now.

What do you think is most misunderstood about your job? 

A lot of times when I think of other people who are not in the education system, they right away think about, ‘Oh my gosh, you have so much grading to do. How do you have time to grade? Oh my gosh, do you have to do lesson planning? How do you know what you’re going to teach?’ It’s more of like (people being focused on) the actual concept and academics of teaching, but it’s way more than that.

What makes you feel accomplished as a teacher? 

To be honest, I think every year there’s always something different, but I can share something that recently happened to me that just kind of re-energized me and refueled me. I went to San Diego two weeks ago and I got to see my fifth-grade class graduate from eighth grade and then moving onto high school. I didn’t tell them I was going to go. So when I showed up and after they were promoted, they just saw me there in the hallway. I congratulated them and many of them cried and hugged me and they were just so happy to see me and being there and supporting their next move and their next change because they’re all going to high school now. That made me realize, this is why I’m here because I want to see these kids become successful and get the resources and be able to navigate the system better than I did. Because they need as much support as possible to continue moving forward.

What can the school districts, the state, do better to support teachers in being successful?

I can’t speak on the school district because I’ve never worked at a district school. The past five years I’ve only worked for charter schools. Something that I feel like this organization, and why I continue to stay in this organization for now, is because they have teacher coaches that will observe you once a week. And they give you feedback on your teaching practices. And as teachers, there’s always new things going on in the world and there are new students every year, so I really appreciate that because it allows me to get better at my practice and the pedagogy behind teaching.

Also, something I really appreciate about this network is that they have these teaching coaching cycles where, not only do you get feedback once a week on your lesson plan, but you also get one-on-one meetings where your manager or coach provides feedback on things that you can improve on as an educator. And for me, I feel like that’s the reason why I continue to stay in this network, because it allows me to grow. At the end of the day, it’s not only about me growing as an educator. The reason I take all of this is because I want my kids to grow. I want them to feel like they’re excelling.

What can parents do better to support teachers?

Sometimes parents might feel a little uncomfortable telling us what really is going on at home or sharing what is really going on with the child. I think the more transparent family members are able to be with their teachers the better, but you can’t expect parents to be as transparent as possible to the teacher if they don’t feel like they have that kind of relationship with you.

So something that I feel like I found is really valuable in my teaching experience is when parents come up to me, call me or text me and say, ‘Hey, like my child had a nightmare. They’ve been having an anxiety attack. That’s why they’re coming in this way.’ That helps me to better support that child when they’re in my classroom. So I think as long as family members and parents are more transparent about situations that might be going on at home with a student, it will allow us to feel more equipped to support that student.

How have the recent attacks toward charter schools made you feel? What would you like the public to know about how it is to be a charter school teacher these days? 

I mean, we’re all educators working hard. I think educators are in this work because they genuinely care about students’ growth and students’ learning and making sure that we support the students to become successful. We’re here to serve the students. I don’t believe in this charter versus district school tension. I personally feel like we’re all working really hard to make sure that our community and our future leaders get the education they deserve in order to navigate the systems that are sometimes against them.

And so for me, I just want the public to know that as an educator, it doesn’t matter if I’m a charter school teacher or a traditional public school teacher. I’m here to serve my students so that they can have the required resources and are able to be really navigate the system in order to get to where they want to be.

• Read more: In New York City, A District-Charter Collaboration That Puts Kids First and Offers a Fresh Perspective on the Political Divide

What’s your main goal for the new school year?

I’m going to continue working on this restorative justice stuff and I’m going to have it for the fourth- and fifth-graders. So I just want to make sure that I’ve provided students with the proper tools to be able to talk about their emotions and address situations in a way where they’re able to share in a space where they feel safe.

The second goal that I have for myself, talking about academics, last year I had a lot of students who came into the school who hated reading and ELA was their least favorite class. And as an ELA teacher, my goal is to continue to make sure that the love for literacy was happening and that students love reading, but that they can actually continue reading and building their reading foundational skills. So I want more kids to love reading.

I’m really excited this year because we’re going to do a writing block and I’ll be the writing teacher as well. So I want to make sure that I can build that love for reading that I did last year with my fifth-grade students who are going to be sixth-graders now. Continue doing that with my incoming fifth-graders, but also build the love for writing as well. Because when students share their stories and their narrative — and writing is such an important tool for them to be able to share the experiences — that I want students to feel like this is just as valuable as reading.

That’s pretty awesome. It’s perfect, getting kids to love reading. It’s needed. We all struggle with that, but we all want that for kids, right?

Teaching low-income Latino students in East Los Angeles didn’t happen by chance for Mercedes Jimenez, a third-grade teacher at KIPP Iluminar Academy. She grew up in the same neighborhood as her students. She wanted to be that person in the classroom who could “fight for equity,” helping students to be as competitive as possible when they go to college.

Jimenez said she was a straight ‘A’ student because her immigrant mother set on her the idea that in America she “could be whatever she wanted to be.”

“I think her as a Latina mom and getting used to this country, she had this idea of, in America, you could be whatever you want to be. I think she really believed that,” she said. “At the same time, I feel like she didn’t really know what it meant or what I had to do. The resources that I needed, the connections that I needed. It’s a lot more than just the work.”

Jimenez, who graduated from UCLA and obtained her teaching credentials from Loyola Marymount University, believes that representation in the classroom matters and that’s why she thinks her job is to show her students what their future success will require.

“You can be anything you want to be, but I really want to mean it and I want to set them up for that. I don’t want it to just be words. I actually want them to feel prepared,” she said. “When I became a teacher, I just wanted to make sure that when I say that or when people say it to my students, they really have a chance. They’ll go to UCLA and be competitive up there with the rest of the students, not below them.”

LA School Report asked Jimenez about what could be done better or what needs to change in the education system to allow reforms and innovation to take place in the classroom, as well as her goals for the 2019-20 school year. Her answers have been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Why does representation matter? How does that help students?

To me, representation is big. I think that comes a lot from my own experiences and my own background just being Latina going through life. Whether we accept it or not, there’s going to be discrimination out there. They’re going to have to see certain things at some point.

For me, it’s just important that I make my students culturally aware of that and prepare them for that. Teaching them about different cultures and diversity, so they know that exists also in education. I feel like I grew up in a bubble in a sense where all I knew was my culture and my family. When I went to UCLA, it hit me. I was like, ‘Whoa, I’m different.’ It shocked me that it took me 19 years to realize not everyone’s the same, not everyone’s going to look at me the same. That’s something that’s super important for me and something that I definitely focus on in my classroom to teach, create a community, understanding, and acceptance.

Specifically, how do you talk to your students about these things?

It comes in different ways. For example, when real-life events happen, they see something on the news, the elections, the Trump election. That was a moment where we do a circle. I open it up and we talk about it. They’re only in third grade, but they’re very self-aware. I think a lot of it comes from their household. A lot of students show up upset and they have these ideas about what’s about to happen with our country. I take those as opportunities to create a circle, just open it up, and talk about it. My favorite thing to do is just hear them and listen to what they have to say. Then, them having a discussion and bouncing ideas. Then, me stepping in to clarify things for them. That’s one way. Another way is to read aloud. I feel like choosing the right book that will teach about different cultures is also super important and in opening up discussions. I think the discussion part is the most important.

• Read more: Supreme Court’s conservative majority appears to back Trump plan to end DACA, potentially putting thousands of students and teachers at risk of deportation

What kind of social challenges are your students currently facing? 

There’s a variety. I feel like we have a good mixture of different kinds of students. We serve a low-income area. There are some who need a lot more help emotionally than academically. I think our school is really good at prioritizing that. If we see someone who has struggles, someone who has lived through experiences that have really impacted them, we focus on them first as a person before we teach. I think that’s very important. I’ve had a mixture of students throughout the years. I’ve had some, who I know their families work and they struggle to keep up with their children. What I mean by that is, I can just tell they don’t really do their homework at home or they’re struggling to do their homework at home. (They need to) get that extra help.

How do you think teachers can bring more innovation to the classroom?

Honestly, you have to be open to new ideas. I think that’s the most important. For me, I always make my decisions based on what my students need. Every year, you’re going to get a different cohort of students. They’re not all going to be the same, so you’re going to have to try different things. What might have worked for me one year is not going to work again for the next group of students. The most important part — and what teachers need to look at first — is that. Get to know your students, build relationships with them. Create a sense of community because if you don’t have that, it’s going to be very difficult to teach. That’s something that I definitely do in my classroom.

As every year goes by, I’m going into my fifth year of teaching, I think that’s something that’s at the heart of my teaching. If my students are not happy, if they’re not making connections, if they don’t have relationships, especially with me, the rest of the school year is going to be really difficult. I do think it starts there and just being open to trying new things. Especially when you work in the public school system, they tell you to do it one way. Just being open to … trying it in different ways that the students will get it.

Can you give me an example of something innovative that you have tried recently in the classroom?

Let me say this as an example. With math, last year, I had a cohort of students who could just visualize everything really easily in their minds. I could just teach. I could teach the concepts, I could have conversations. We could have discussions. This year, my cohort changed a little bit. I could tell they weren’t really good at creating pictures in their mind. I have to create visuals for them. I think one of the things that I used this year that I didn’t use the year before was the use of manipulatives. Those are different objects that they can use. Little blocks, sticks, or anything they can use to actually create the problems on the floor or at their desk. That would be an example.

What do you think, either your school, the school district, or even the state could do differently to better support teachers?

Just in general, I would say giving teachers more support. I can only speak for my school. I know in my school, they prioritize the teachers. If they need materials, whatever they need for the classroom before the school year starts, they make sure that we have everything we need to teach. If we don’t have those tools, it’s really difficult throughout the year. That’s, in my opinion, one of the first things that schools can do, just making sure that they support the teachers in anything that they need.

What could parents do better to support you in your job?

We always say we love parent support. Honestly, we have an open-door policy. We welcome parents to come into our school, come into our classrooms. Parents being involved asking questions. Even if they don’t understand something, coming into our school or reaching out to teachers. That communication is key. I know some parents are scared sometimes to talk to their teachers or they don’t want to approach them because they’re too nervous. I think parents just have to be more proactive in reaching out to their teachers. If there’s something they don’t understand, something comes up, something’s going on with their child, just reaching out and talking to them about it.

Do you think parents can do better in preparing their children for the different challenges they may have to face in the education system, particularly for Latino students or other students of color? 

I think about myself as a mom eventually at some point and being a Latina. I know I’m different than my parents because I’ve got an education. I look back to it, and it’s true. I do think about what my parents could have done differently. I think for them, it’s more just being able to ask questions. I think it’s important or to do research because, yes, my school was good, at the same time, I know my parents just put me there because that’s where I belonged. That’s the neighborhood area. I think parents just not being so scared to look for resources, to do some research, to talk to their children about the things that they’re going to see. Being able to open up to them and talking about the issues that are going on around us. Most importantly, I think Latinos, in general, have this. I don’t know if we’re just scared of the world or scared of asking questions and getting shut down. I think we’ve just got to be more secure in ourselves. We have rights. I’m thinking of it in terms of schools. There are many school options out there. If you do the research and you figure out which is the best one, it could give you a better chance academically for your child.

• Read more: Teacher Spotlight: Alliance’s Guillermo Lopez on setting higher expectations in math for low-performing students and convincing their teachers that excellence is possible

What do you think is most misunderstood about your job as a teacher?

I hear the same thing over and over, especially when I tell people I’m a teacher. They think, ‘Your job is easy. All you have to do is sit in the classroom and babysit for six, seven hours.’ I think that’s the most common thing that I get. As well as, ‘You’re lucky. You get two months off in the middle of the school year. You don’t have to work for two months.’ I think that’s a big misunderstanding because those two months are hard-earned. You’re in the classroom for a whole year with little kids. They’re little. It takes a lot. A lot of management, a lot of energy. By the time that the school year ends, it’s a well-deserved break. When it goes to the babysitting part, I think a lot of people have this misunderstanding of what teachers do and what they teach, especially at the lower level. They don’t understand that we’re teaching reading, we’re teaching math, grammar. It’s all these foundations that students need in order to go on and be successful in high school. It’s not just high school where the real teaching is happening. It starts at a very early age.

What has been one of your best moments of teaching? What has been one of your proudest accomplishments?

I would definitely say the most rewarding is just the bond that I create with my students. … I had a hard student. That’s what I like to call him. He needed extra attention. He was having a rough time. Just being able to impact someone like that, create a relationship with them, and for a whole entire year, work on their emotions and help them grow. At the end of the year, just seeing that change. I think with that student, that’s a memory that I have. Just seeing someone come in struggling so much and at the end of the year, having a smile on your face, having a different outlook on life, and just giving things a chance, it’s very rewarding. I think those are the memories that I live for.

Is there something that you would like the public to know about charters, or just in particular about your school?

The way I would respond to that, at the end of the day, I think we’re all fighting for the same thing. I think that’s our kids’ education. Whether it’s charter or traditional, I feel like it shouldn’t be a fight against both, or which one’s better, because we’re all on the same mission. We all want the same thing and that’s for a better education for our kids.

What’s your main goal or one of your goals for the new school year?

It’s an interesting question because I’m actually looping with my kids, which means that I’m going to get to keep them (for two consecutive school years). I think my biggest goal is that I’m going to focus more on my non-readers, my students who are struggling to read. For me, I think my goal is to get all of my students to become readers. I do think reading is very important. That’s a life skill that they need. I think that’s my goal. That’s one bigger goal.

In an attempt to find the answer to why teachers of color across the nation leave their classrooms at a higher rate, a report released last month by Teach Plus and Education Trust examined the problems these teachers face in navigating the profession.

As a teacher of color, Daniel Helena has experienced first hand the challenges chronicled in “If You Listen, We Will Stay: Why Teachers of Color Leave and How to Disrupt Teacher Turnover.” As a Teach Plus-California Policy Fellowship alumnus, he collaborated with the report’s authors for nearly a year by leading several focus groups with other educators in Los Angeles. Teach Plus is a national nonprofit with a mission to empower teachers to lead improvements in policy and practice during its nine-month fellowships.

Across the nation, 51 percent of students in U.S. public schools are students of color, but just 20 percent of teachers are teachers of color, according to the report, which also notes that in the 2000s, 15 percent of white teachers were leaving the profession compared to 19 percent of teachers of color.

Helena sees the negatives in too much teacher turnover in his own career and in meeting his goal to have schools better address the needs of the communities they serve.

“I’ve bounced around to different schools and I’m hoping to stay here for a while because I think that’s what it takes. You kind of get some agency in your classroom and then eventually the school, and then as you stay long enough, you get to know the community well.”

Helena is now in his third year at Kory Hunter Middle School, part of the Alliance College-Ready Public Schools charter network, where he teaches sixth grade English. The school in Huntington Park in southeast Los Angeles is in a heavily Latino, low-income neighborhood. Many of Helena’s students are children of immigrants or immigrants themselves, and like him, have Spanish as their first language.

Helena was born in Venezuela. He was 6 when he and his mother emigrated to the United States and settled in Atlanta, where he attended public schools. He earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and a master’s in early childhood education from Georgia State University.

He began his career in the metro Atlanta public school system, where he taught for five years before moving to Los Angeles to work for Ednovate charter schools, where he implemented positive behavioral interventions at a high school. He says the number of suspensions there was drastically reduced by creating a character-building curriculum and establishing systems that recognized student accomplishments.

Helena says he feels supported at Kory Hunter and trusted in the classroom decisions he makes, but acknowledges that many teachers of color do not.

The Teach Plus report proposes that schools provide pathways for leadership for teachers of color as one of its five recommendations. Others are to provide mentorship, improve compensation and reduce isolation as ways of addressing the five main challenges leading educators of color to leave the profession: feeling unwelcome, invisible, undervalued, deprived of autonomy and placed in unfavorable working conditions.

LA School Report asked Helena about what could be done better or what needs to change in the education system to allow reforms and innovation to take place in the classroom, as well as his goals for the 2019-20 school year. His answers have been lightly edited for length and clarity.

What motivated you to want to become a teacher?

I moved to the United States when I was 6 years old. It was just me and my mom. I guess I started teaching because I really benefited from having good teachers as a kid. I didn’t know any English when I moved to the United States, neither did my mom and so I was at the whim of the public school that was in our neighborhood. My mom didn’t know anything about the public school system. I ended up getting really lucky because I went to a pretty good school. It was a public school.

And so I was able to learn English pretty quickly. I already had a pretty strong foundation in Spanish, but I appreciate the help that I got when I was young and I became a teacher because I feel some kind of responsibility, some kind of calling to help families and students in a similar situation as mine. I currently teach in an area where there are a lot of Spanish- speaking families, where I’ve taught in different types of communities as well. So that’s why I started teaching.

How did you get involved in the Teach Plus and The Education Trust report?

Well, I’m at the point in my career where I’m interested to see and learn about different policies that affect classrooms. And through becoming a fellow for Teach Plus, I was able to meet other teachers, who are in this, who have similar interests, and we kind of landed on how to better support teachers of color and how they can be in the classroom longer. Because of my personal experience, being in traditional public and also charter schools, I noticed that it’s not easy — it’s not easy to teach — but it’s also not easy to teach in schools with high needs. And if you’re a teacher of color you can face additional challenges and obstacles.

What did you find new or surprising from the focus groups?

One thing that really resonated with me was a comment that I heard in my first focus group from an educator. They said that they wanted more professional development around youth culture. And the reason that resonates with me is because a lot of the times teachers, who share racial or cultural identity markers with students, are thought of as having an advantage with their students. But one identity marker that is really not talked about is age and the differences in generations. So just because you share that racial or cultural or ethnic identity marker doesn’t mean that you’re just, it’s going to be so easy for you. And schools and school systems really do need to adapt to understanding the current generation of students, the challenges that they face and how teachers in schools can support them and meet them where they’re at. There is a disconnect, not only academically in terms of what we’re having our students learn and how we’re having them learn, but also the space or the lack of space that we allow for our students to develop socially and emotionally as well.

From the report’s recommendations, which one do you consider to be crucial?

I would really push for the more culturally relevant professional development one, the one where teachers are having more opportunities to learn about trauma-informed practices, implicit bias training, because I have worked exclusively in high-need communities, communities, where based on standardized testing, the students don’t really perform very well and I don’t think it’s a representation of just students’ abilities. I think it’s more of a lack of understanding of the school systems and how to support the students. And so I say that because there’s a big gap in terms of I already mentioned this, about what adults understand and what needs to be done for students. And so, if we were able to educate our teachers better in terms of how to teach students who bring a lot of trauma into the classroom and how to help them navigate the world of academics, because we still have to teach them, we still have to get them to achieve at a high level, but we have to do that with more obstacles that a lot of (more) affluent communities don’t have to face.

• Read more: Teacher Spotlight: Florence Griffith Joyner Elementary School’s Veronica Amis, 34 years of teaching in Watts with ‘unconditional love’

What have you done in the classroom that has been innovating or unique?

When I worked at Ednovate, I taught ninth-grade English. I created a curriculum with another teacher. And that curriculum allowed students to explore their identity markers. They would read with other students and they ended up writing about the identity markers that most resonated with them. The ones they struggled with. It was just a really good opportunity for students to learn more about themselves. We were still able to teach the skills and the strategies that the students were responsible for, but we did it in a way where it was a lot more culturally relevant for them. And I think students really took a lot out of it, but they also enjoyed it.

How do you think school administrations or school districts could better support teachers of color?

Well, just like a teacher that looks at their curriculum, I think administrators need to do the the same with the type of professional development that they’re prioritizing. One of the challenges is teacher turnover. If there’s constant teacher turnover, then a lot of the times the schools have to constantly retrain teachers and those retrainings, sometimes they’re veteran teachers, the teachers who have been there for a while. They have to attend those too. And so for them, it’s not as meaningful, because they’ve already learned a lot of the training. But what can end up happening is that as a school, the school gets stuck in terms of their development and their learning, because we’re not teaching, we’re not differentiating our teaching to our teachers. It’s just like a good teacher teaches students who have various abilities and who come in at various readiness levels. Schools need to do the same with their teachers.

It is encouraging that LAUSD is looking to make some changes to their Aspiring Principals program and their curriculum, which is one of our recommendations. I hope that continues to build the … I guess build the momentum that we need to focus on how we’re developing our teachers. Because if teachers of color were — and really all teachers, but really if teachers of color — were receiving this type of training, it would be communicated that the work that sometimes is taken for granted, in terms of getting to know our students and understanding their situations well, we’re going to prioritize it so much that we’re going to professionalize that knowledge. The teacher who can speak in the student’s home language or can speak in a way that students understand and are more receptive to them. The teacher who can adapt their curriculum in a way that makes it more engaging for the students. We’re going to make that important. It needs to be prioritized and standardized.

What can parents do to better support teachers?

That’s a great question. From my perspective, parents, I feel a lot of love and appreciation from parents, I do. I still kind of want to put it on the school though. I think schools need to continue to reach out to parents, to educate parents. I worked at schools where not to over… I guess not to stereotype, but I worked at a lot of schools where there’s just a big gap of knowledge for the parents, in terms of how does the American schooling system work, how does the L.A. charter school system work. I mean a lot of people don’t know that. ‘How can I support my student at home so that I’m working at home to support them and then I trust that their teachers at school are also supporting them?’ So then we’re working as a team, teachers at the school and parents at the home base.

Currently, at my school, we have parent workshops. We have several events at the school, hosts like coffee with the principal, content nights, back to school nights. So engaging with the parents. When the school engages with the community, then it’s the responsibility of the parents to participate. But a lot of the times the parents don’t know. They don’t know where they can have an entryway. I’ve made home visits in the past and I’ve done research on how do parents perceive the school if they’re coming from a different country? Sometimes, parents, they see themselves as respecting the school by not getting involved, because they trust the school so much. It’s kind of backward from the American thinking of you need to be as involved as possible.

I’ve talked about educating the teachers better, obviously educating students better, but also educating the parents better and getting to know what questions they have so they can feel comfortable, especially when there’s a language barrier and the school personality is not equipped to necessarily understand and communicate with parents. It’s really important that those barriers are addressed and parents are made to feel welcome in the school.

 What keeps you motivated to continue teaching?

The students give me so much life. They give me so much energy, as much as it, as much energy and effort as this job requires, particularly when students have several years of growth to make. I get just as much, if not more, appreciation from students. I feel supported at my current school because I’m trusted that the decisions I make are the right ones. It hasn’t always been the case for me but, and I know a lot of teachers, especially teachers of color, are sometimes questioned, ‘Hmm, is that the best thing? Is that the right thing?’ And that can be a difficult situation to be in, because if you feel like you’re being questioned and not supported, then all of the challenges grow and grow. You don’t see the silver lining. So I guess just to phrase it in another way. I am reminded of the growth that my students make and I see the success and I try to focus on that as much as possible. I try to celebrate that with my students and that’s what keeps me motivated.

What are your goals for the new school year and overall as an educator?

Well, we’ve been talking about … I want to do some work around changing schools and school systems to meet the current landscape of the students in the communities. Our schools need to work for families that are in the communities. But what I have seen a lot is the communities change, but the schools stay the same. Policies don’t adapt to meet the needs of our communities. And when that happens, the people who suffer the most are first and foremost the students, and then the families in those communities. And it might be linguistic changes, it might be socioeconomic changes, it might be cultural changes.

But I do want to do some work around how to make grassroots changes because the community should be the biggest source of information that drives a school’s vision. Sometimes it’s not. Sometimes, almost all of the time, the vision comes from the top, from whatever the district sees is best, whatever the network sees as best. But even within a network, there are so many differences. Even within one city, there are so many differences that aren’t taken into account when there’s a standardized goal, when there’s a standardized approach. And so I guess my goal is to continue to learn how to leverage student voice, parent voice, and the community voice to best meet the needs of those particular communities.

And I’ve bounced around to different schools and I’m hoping to stay here for a while because I think that’s what it takes. You kind of get some agency in your classroom and then eventually the school, and then as you stay long enough, you get to know the community well. And I know I’m going back and forth, but that’s a challenge when there’s a high teacher turnover rate and it just limits your impact when teachers bounce around from school to school for various reasons.

Carol Park doesn’t take lightly the responsibility of teaching what she calls the “underseen” middle school student. With most of the attention given to the early elementary grades and the high school level, she thinks of the middle school grades as a “foundational time” where teachers can begin developing a student’s path to college.

Park has only taught at the middle school level. Currently, she teaches seventh-grade math and leadership at Columbus Middle School in Canoga Park, northeast of Los Angeles.

“I never left middle school, because the thoughts, or the ideas that are formed in middle school, they carry with them to high school. And at our school with students, with their backgrounds, many of them drop out in high school … but it’s what’s formed in middle school, I believe that sticks with them,” Park said.

That she acknowledges that many of her students don’t come from “a perfect home,” has helped her, she said, to have a strong relationship with them, which then allows her to have conversations with them and their families about pursuing college.

“I think the more knowledgeable our parents are in doing this path, the more we’ll see more students following this path,” she said. “It’s just sharing information and communicating it regularly. Not just once a year, having a college fair, but it should be consistent.”

Park is excited about bringing new technology into her math class this year. She says her students will have an iPad, which they are going to be using to create videos of themselves explaining math problems. “It will bring more fun into the classroom, into the academic learning part, it will get students more engaged. I’m super excited about the technology piece.”

LA School Report asked Park about what could be done better or what needs to change in the education system to allow reforms and innovation to take place in the classroom, as well as her goals for the 2019-20 school year. Her answers have been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Why did you choose to teach at the middle school level?

I think middle school is a time when the children are — and I hate to use the word neglected — but maybe underseen, because in elementary school, the parents are very, they’re very involved, and in high school they’re getting ready for college, so they’re also very involved. But in middle school, they’re kind of lost. The children are on their own, and that is when I think they need the most support in middle school because they’re developing. It’s a foundational time, and I have a lot of influence. Teachers have a lot of influence and groundwork to put into these children to instill in these children when they’re in middle school. That’s why I never left middle school, because the thoughts, or the ideas that are formed in middle school they carry with them to high school.

And at our school with students, with their backgrounds, many of them drop out in high school. Some of them might drop out in 10th grade, 11th grade, 12th grade, but it’s what’s formed in middle school, I believe that sticks with them. Like, ‘Oh, I can make it through this. I’m not gonna give up.’ And I think that’s why I’ve always stuck with it. And I love the school that I’m at now because every day I feel like my work is meaningful.

What are the main social and academic challenges faced by your students in their community?

Our school is a Title I school where most (of our families) are low-income families. We have … our students, like 98% are Latino. A lot of the parents, don’t have college degrees, they don’t have higher education. The dialogue at home isn’t, ‘You’re going to go to college after high school.’ It’s more like, ‘When you’re 18, we need you to work.’ My day to day conversation with them is trying to change that mindset, it’s that, ‘Hey, if you apply yourself, you’re able to make it to college. And it’s life changing, what a college degree can do for you.’ That’s not just for a few of my students. I say that to every student I come across. And it’s not, ‘Oh, this one’s going to be great at sports, or that one.’ I don’t make that judgment because I, nor anyone else, knows what a student will grow up to be. I don’t want to limit that for them.

What do you think the school district, or the state could do better to meet your students’ needs?

I think the district can help in providing more professional development that was made mandatory, where it wasn’t an option, because I’ve grown a lot as a teacher because I volunteer, and go to professional development. There’s so much useful information that I wish all my colleagues would receive, but it’s on a voluntary basis. I wish it was more mandatory.

What do you think is most misunderstood about your job? 

I would say what’s most misunderstood is the influence that teachers have on students every day. How much influence we have, our day-to-day language, how we talk to them. We’re like family to most of these students. We spend more time with these students than some of their families because they’re working longer than they’re at home. And how much we influence them. I have lunch clubs, and I have a Girl Empowerment Club. We’re spending class time, lunch and whatever break, or after school, or before school (time). And in that hour, that it’s consistently they’re doing hard work, and they’re performing and they’re open to learning. That’s a lot of time that we’re spending to get to know each other. Every year I’m saddened at the end of the year when they have to go. I’m always sad because it took a year or two to really get to know them, and then they move on.

When did you know that you wanted to be a teacher? 

When I was little, my third-grade teacher was great. She taught me how to multiply, and I just really embraced education at that age. She had a lot to do with it because she was so positive, and I just thought, ‘Oh, I want to be a teacher when I grow up.’ And as I got older, it was just something that I, you know, I evaluated. I watched how my teachers were and I just thought, This is a field I really do want to get into’ and I think I would be helpful because I wasn’t a strong student and it was hard for me to learn things. And I always thought, ‘Well, you know, I could show them a different way, or I can teach it’ … I just thought of different ways to teach things so that it’d be more interesting … I never wanted to do anything else.

What are you currently doing in the classroom that you think is unique or innovating?

For me, it’s building relationships with my students. It’s knowing when to push them or when to pull back, it’s having a sense of understanding each student that I come across. And I also approach each student as though I don’t know how much trauma they’ve had in their life. I, from day one, I don’t go in thinking, ‘Oh my students had breakfast this morning,’ or, ‘They came from a perfect home.’ I always think, ‘I don’t know what happened last night, how much trauma is in their mind already.’ When they come in, I’m very sensitive to them, them to me and we just feel each other out. In LAUSD, we push the six pillars of character traits, and I try to build those six traits all year long, and that it’s not just something that we say or that we demonstrate one day a year, but it’s every day. We try to be responsible, we try to care, we try to build citizenship. And it’s just having a constant dialogue. There’s a lot of communicating, and encouragement, and a lot of positivity. But at the same time, I will call them out when they’re wrong, knowing if that’s the right time. But I will say, ‘Hey, that’s not appropriate. You don’t curse in class. Don’t be mean to each other.’ Especially with girls, sometimes they’re in the age right now where if you look different, or you wear something different, they can be mean to you. And I try to talk to them about how to solve their problems with more positivity and being more open-minded.

How do you think your school or the district can help you be innovative in the classroom?

I think our principal (Debra McIntyre-Sciarrino) has been working a lot with that, and she’s really helped with us collaborating more. It’s not like we’re isolated in our own rooms, in our department meetings. We’re in a program called InnovatED, where we have to collaborate, where we have to communicate, and we have to share what we’re doing and if it’s working. We talk about why is it working and how are we going to continue it. Or if it’s not working, we discuss, ‘Well let’s discontinue that and try something new.’ There’s a lot of collaboration, which has helped tremendously with moving forward.

What would you say parents can help you do a good job in the classroom?

There are two parts to this. For me, I don’t call parents, I text them. That has helped a lot because sometimes they don’t answer the phone, but when I shoot them a text message they respond. Responding to the teacher has helped, as well as just reaching out if they have any concerns. It can be an academic concern or a personal concern. Having a strong relationship with the teacher. I’ve seen more successful students when the parents are very involved, just checking up on how their son or daughter is doing.

I think in the middle school level they want to kind of push off. I’ve heard parents say, ‘Oh, I want my child to be more independent,’ but being independent doesn’t mean leaving them alone. It’s still coming to school, checking up on the student, checking up on them, checking on their grades and seeing how they’re doing. And if there’s a parent conference needed, even for a positive chat conference, that’s fine, too. It doesn’t always have to wait to be a negative thing.

Is there anything you wish would change in the (public education) system, or that you think needs immediate attention?

I think the value of education. Right now I hear a lot, I see a lot of arguments about, ‘Oh, if you invest in an education like a higher degree, you’re wasting $200,000 for a $40,000 job,’ and I think that’s a huge misconception because I think if you can make money off of your college degree, that’s wonderful. But in higher education, college is to expand your mind, not only to just make money, but for the community to get better. And I think that’s a huge conversation that isn’t happening because the more education the community has, the better it becomes. For me, I strongly believe in college because it makes the environment and community better regardless of the income. It just makes the community better because people are more knowledgeable. And what you do with that knowledge, if you can make money off of that knowledge, that’s wonderful. Just being educated is valuable enough.

What would need to happen so all students could have the opportunity to access a college education? 

You know what, I just think having conversations is a great start. Having conversations, and then also showing them around. I have two children of my own, and I have been talking about college to them since kindergarten. And I’ve talked to my children about this is good for college, this is how we get in, this is what you have to do. It’s having those conversations. For me, I know how to get there. And I think a lot of these families don’t know how to get there, so there should be like a class or something that can be offered. Even, not even if a class, but seminars for parents so they can get information to, you know, before your child’s high school, download a college application, see what are the qualifications to get into college, get information about FAFSA. (Let them know) that there are things out there that will help them. And I think the more knowledgeable our parents are in doing this path, the more we’ll see more students following this path. Because if you don’t know it, how are you going to get there? It’s just sharing information and communicating it regularly. Not just once a year, having a college fair, but it should be consistent.

What would you say is one of your proudest accomplishments?

Not in my eyes, but other teachers had labeled (some students) as difficult boys, and they’re the type of … if they don’t like a teacher, they will curse out a teacher, very defiant, very rude, very disrespectful. And in my class, I was very proud when we had instructional rounds and there were (other) teachers and there was a director with us, and those students stepped up and articulated math arguments. And they were able to analyze the problem and explain why the problem was incorrect, or why they agreed, or disagreed. And they were very engaged. And it’s not just that one moment, but it’s that whole year, watching my students engaged in lessons where these are students that are getting F’s in their classes, but they’re able to articulate, they’re able to read, write, speak on math problems, grade-level math problems, Level Three math problems.

What kind of support were they given in your class?

I think it’s that in my classroom, I have mutual respect from day one. I don’t look at them differently. I don’t have any prejudgments about them. As I said, I don’t know what kind of trauma level they might have. I come in with an open heart, and I expressed that to them. I don’t have any information from their past, I haven’t spoken to any of their teachers. Even if their teachers say something to me, I won’t hold it against them. It’s in one ear, out the other, and that we start fresh.

It’s not always a good day. Sometimes they’re mad at me about something, and then as an adult, I need to know when I just need to back off, let it go, this student is having a bad day, and when I need to step in and say, ‘No, it’s not OK. You don’t get to speak to me that way.“ It’s having judgment and the right heart. My father told me — I had him make a speech one time. I said, ‘Dad, I don’t know what to say,’ and he said, ‘Tell them that you love (them).’ For me, I just go in there with a loving heart every morning.

What is your main goal for the new school year?

My main goal is to build on the relationships I have with the students, because some of them I have them for a second year, and to really … I’m really excited about my new students, the ones coming out of sixth grade coming into seventh grade because it’s a totally different experience than what they’ve had before. And I’m really excited to start the new year. Every year, I’m excited to start the new year. And I guess, mine it would be building relationships and then we can build from there the academic goals.

After more than 20 years working in the insurance industry, Polly Buller-Ulm thought it wasn’t too late to pursue what she always knew was her true calling in life — working with special-needs kids.

Buller-Ulm’s goal when she decided to go back to school and get her teaching credential was to be the type of educator she would want for her family members with special needs.

“I realized that what I really needed to do was become the kind of teacher that I expected for my loved ones,” she said. This year, marks her seventh teaching special education students at LAUSD’s Napa Street Elementary in Northridge, where 85 percent of children are Latino, 20 percent are special education, and 100 percent live in low-income households.

“I believe that this is my purpose. So as difficult as it was, I still feel 100 percent that it was worth all of the sacrifices, and time and effort because what we do in the special ed program and at school with these kids every day, it’s so fulfilling, so rewarding, and so meaningful… I can’t even put any sort of measurement on the value that brings.”

Buller-Ulm began teaching first grade and transitional kindergarten, but three years ago she decided to teach preschool instead so she could help families get early intervention for their kids with developmental challenges.

“I realized the value of being a part of that program and helping children and families early when their kids are as young as possible so that maybe we could put interventions in place and get more kids into the general ed classes as opposed to the special day classes,” she said.

Buller-Ulm believes her special ed students are capable of excelling when no learning limits are placed on them. She says what has worked for her is partnering with their families by encouraging them to have high expectations and to dream big for their kids.

LA School Report asked Buller-Ulm about what could be done better or what needs to change in the education system to allow reforms and innovation to take place in the classroom, as well as her goals for the 2019-20 school year. Her answers have been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Why is it important to engage the families of special needs kids in the early grades?

It really makes a big difference to have a partnership with our families, to support our families. As a family member, when you have a family member diagnosed with a disability, it’s daunting, it can be terrifying. You’re wondering, What does this mean for their future? What is it they’re going to be able to do? How satisfying is their life going to be?’ There are so many things that come up, and as a family member of somebody with a disability, I can relate to it on that side, as well as on the teaching side. So I feel like it puts me in a unique position to be able to partner with parents and help them to understand that we don’t need to place limits on our kids. We can have dreams and goals and support them in getting there, and they might not get there on the same timeframe as maybe their typically developing peers are getting there, but that doesn’t mean they’re not going to get there. I don’t see any reason to place any limits on our kids and what they’re capable of doing. In fact, I try to partner with parents and encourage them to have high expectations, and to dream big for their kids, and it’s amazing what we can see, and kids just rise to the occasion.

What do you think is most misunderstood about your job, particularly working with special ed kids?

I think that there are some individuals who don’t understand what the kids are capable of, and so they look at it like it’s more of a glorified babysitting job as opposed to actually teaching. Every individual, regardless of whether they’re in special ed or general ed, everybody learns in their own unique way. Some of us maybe have a more unconventional path to learning, and maybe they need more movement in their days in order to be able to have their body be calm and regulated, to be able to learn things that are being taught in the general ed classroom. We just work with each individual to figure out what their needs are, what their unique needs are, and what their special learning pathway is. I think that I’ve heard individuals ask why resources are being wasted, don’t I get bored, and I’m never bored. In fact, the more challenging the situation is, to me, the more inspiring it is. I have a student who came into my classroom, and he was able to sit, but he wasn’t able to crawl. He wasn’t able to walk, he wasn’t talking, he wasn’t even engaging with toys, playing with objects. He was just sitting, and not really reacting to things, and today this child is walking independently on the playground.

Can you share more about your students and the community you serve?

So we’re a Title I school. One hundred percent of our students receive free breakfast and lunch. As far as the program itself, I teach a PALS program. It’s Preschool for All Learners. So we have children who have disabilities. I mean really it’s such a wide range of disabilities, children who have very mild disabilities to children who have very severe disabilities. Some of the kids might have more of a speech and language delay. Some of the kids may have some more very profound disabilities, so it’s really a wide variety. I think one of the things that makes our program so interesting and I love it, I love having such a diverse population of students. I feel like we all learn from each other. One of the things that I really love about our district is that we are really trying to move toward more inclusion, so we’re looking always for opportunities to have our students with special needs working with our students who are typically developing, because having those peer models is so motivating and helpful to our students.

Is there anything that you think your school, the district, or even the state could do differently to better support teachers?

Well, we hear it all the time, funding is always an issue. It’s always a challenge. I can only speak for myself and my classroom. I spend a very significant portion of my salary investing back in my classroom, they need so many different opportunities to be exposed to the different concepts that we’re teaching in multiple ways in order for them to acquire those skills. So I think that continuing to invest in these programs, in these materials, I mean, the materials don’t last forever. So as a teacher, I am constantly purchasing or making things to supplement the learning so that I can maximize these opportunities for our kids. So when it comes to state funding, I just would love to see more of that funding actually hit the classroom itself.

What do you think is the biggest way parents can help teachers?

I think partnering with teachers, but I think communication is huge, and that goes both ways. I think that it’s really important that we are open to our parents, and that we welcome them into our classrooms, and that we truly work as a community. I feel that our campus does a very nice job of really partnering with families. We have a very active parents center, and we have very active parents in our community who participate in all the activities that we have at our school. But just constantly keeping that line of communication open with parents, and making them feel welcome, and helping them to know the value that they bring.

I think that having a student population where we have students who are second language learners, I think sometimes if the teacher and the parents don’t always speak the same language, there can be times where maybe the parent is shying away from communicating as much with the teacher. I think that as a teacher, I have to look for people to help bridge that and communicate with the parents so that they know what’s going on with their child, so that they feel the sense of community that we’re building here on campus in our classroom and in our school as a whole. And just continuing to encourage them to be active on campus, to be a presence with their child.

The other thing is following through. If we tell parents that we’re going to do something that we follow through and we do the things that we say are going to do because that’s what builds trust and builds relationships.

What would you say is one of your proudest accomplishments as a teacher?

My proudest accomplishment so far really is that situation with the little boy that I was sharing with you. I mean practically seeing the light bulb turn on and watching the difference that it made in his life, once we were able to get him moving, everything changed for him. It was a painstaking process of investing every day additional time and trying to make sure that we’re building those muscles because if we don’t have strong muscles, we can’t support our body, and we can’t stand. … I mean, it is really difficult to function in this world when you don’t have mobility, and we knew how important that was for him. So to have invested all of that time and effort, and the trials and errors, and then to watch the child blossom and watch his reaction to his world, and to people, and his excitement to sing songs with friends and know all of the hand movements and clapping and celebrating together. It’s incredible.

What’s your main goal for the new school year?

Well, I have so many. I have a lot of students returning to my classroom. Almost all of my students that I had last year are returning to my classroom, so really getting my kids ready for kindergarten, and I want to see as many of them as possible go into general ed classrooms, and so that’s what I’m working towards. I’m always looking for opportunities to enhance their development, and get them into general ed.

Veronica Amis was born in St Louis, Missouri but she moved to Los Angeles with her family in 1963 when she was three years old, so she went to LAUSD schools until she graduated from Alain LeRoy Locke High School in Watts.

“So I’m definitely a product of LA Unified School District,” says the teacher who has spent the last 34 years teaching second- and third-graders in the same school in that same underserved South LA community.

“When I was young, I had three aunts who were teachers, two were teachers and one was an educational aide. In the summers when I was in junior high school, I would go with them to work because I was out of school and I would help them with their classes,” Amis said. “I fell in love with their classes. I fell in love with their room environment … So I said to my aunt, ‘I want to be a teacher just like you,’ and it did stuff in my head. Before I knew it, I was going to Cal State Long Beach. I wanted to be a teacher.”

After more than 30 years educating mostly black and Latino low-income students at Florence Griffith Joyner Elementary School, one of 18 schools in the Partnership for Los Angeles Schools, a nonprofit established in 2007 to manage the district’s then- lowest-performing schools, Amis knows what keeps her coming back to the same place. It’s her belief that the community of Watts is very special and that its families trust their educators.

“I feel that we as educators have to do as much as is humanly possible to provide safe environments, to provide acceptance and just unconditional love for these kids,” she said.

• Read more: Commentary: School safety means physical, intellectual and emotional safety – How Jordan High School in Watts is transforming school culture

Amis has intentionally remained teaching second and third grades because she feels they are so important and that’s how she can best support her students’ learning moving forward.

“For me, second grade and third grade are so crucial to their foundation because after you go onto third grade, and even fourth grade, you are not learning to read, you’re reading to learn. But if you haven’t learned to read, if you don’t have foundational skills in decoding and understanding print, it is difficult for you to read for information,” she said.

LA School Report asked Amis about what could be done better or what needs to change in the education system to allow reforms and innovation to take place in the classroom, as well as her goals for the new school year. Her answers have been lightly edited for length and clarity.

What is so special about Florence Griffith Joyner?

I think the community is so special. I feel that they trust educators with their students, with their children and they give us that responsibility to educate their kids and take care of their kids. And it’s such an honor, I definitely am humbled by that. I noticed that community works for their kids (and has) what everybody wants within a community — to have a rich education and to learn to love learning and to be successful.

What do you think are some challenges faced by your students in their community? 

The current climate right now is challenging for the community, with funding cuts, and the political climate, there are so many things that the families face now that are even harsher than it has been in the past. It’s more serious, it’s having such an emotional impact on the students. And I feel that we as educators have to do as much as is humanly possible to provide safe environments, to provide acceptance, and just unconditional love for the kids. That helps them to feel confident and to take some of that fear away from them. So that they can focus on learning. So as educators I believe we need to provide as much support for them emotionally just as we do for them academically.

What would you say is your best moment or day as a teacher? What is your proudest accomplishment?

I would have to say meeting the children’s needs. Making sure that no child leaves my room at the end of the year without having made progress, as much progress as they can make. Instilling in the kids a belief in their ability. I feel like as a human, as an educator, just as a mom, I feel so blessed that a child now has a grasp of their ability and they start to soar once their confidence is instilled, and they build your confidence. That makes me feel like I have done something. Just one part of this child’s life.

What do you think is most misunderstood about your job? 

I think that people don’t know that teachers do more than just teach the curriculum. One important thing that we do is to change life skills. And to help to build a foundation for students that are things that will change the rest of their lives. Like persistence. To be persistent, stay focused on the task and do the best that you can with each task. There’s even a value to being punctual, just be on time, be present. Those are things that are life skills that are things that you take with you for the rest of your life. And it’s a value that we promote as educators, the families support it. And I think that that’s something that people think, ‘Oh teachers, you just teach the curriculum. You’re teaching kids to read and write or whatever, complete math.’ But we do much more than that. Like I said, even just life skills, tenacity, persistence.

• Read more: Teacher Spotlight: Alliance’s Guillermo Lopez on setting higher expectations in math for low-performing students and convincing their teachers that excellence is possible

After over 30 years in the profession, what would be your advice for new teachers? 

I would say to meet your students where they are, whatever their gifts are, whatever they bring to the table, promote it, encourage it. Whatever it is, don’t be stuck in, ‘Oh, I have to teach this curriculum.’ Always make the curriculum relevant to the students, whatever it is. If you find that your male students may not be interested in that topic, find a topic that they are interested in and they want to learn about and try and meet the students where they are at. So try and make yourself accessible to the kids and help them to relate to you and you to relate to them, which is more important. We’re meeting the students where they are, what their concerns are. I find that little thing that motivates them, meet them at their level.

What do you think the state or the school district could do better to support teachers?

I definitely feel that the fate of the teacher, the community. All stakeholders can invest more in education, specifically nurses, counselors, intervention teachers. You know, we definitely have a need for more staff, more support to meet the needs of our students. That is definitely, to me, a very important way to act. The district, the local government, the state. Even on the federal level, even the private sector can help to support education by investing more in our staffing, in nurses. We need full-time nurses every day at every school, in my opinion. Intervention teachers to help those kids who have somehow not met their minimum competency for the grade levels to help (them). It gets them the foundation of support that they may need. And counselors. We have such a need for counselors where a kid may come to school with grief from the loss of a family member or something. Those supports are just invaluable.

What do you think needs immediate attention or probably needs to be changed in the system at a policy level, either at the state or district level?

Well, I definitely feel like social and emotional learning… I think the curriculum needs a boost. A curriculum that really meets the cultural and emotional needs of kids. Currently, we have a program called Second Step and it’s great in what it does, but there needs to be more. More techniques to meet the social-emotional needs of students.

What do you think needs to happen at the school level, or district level as well, to bring more innovation into the classroom?

I think the experiences from the community, within the community there are all kinds of resources, so it would be wonderful to get more scientists on campus. They have these science fairs, and things like that are neat. And enhanced field trips where the kids really get to broaden their experiences. Going out into the community, maybe a community garden, being more involved in things like that. Growing vegetables and things, or even other field trips to experience. Los Angeles is a big city. It’d be wonderful to really take advantage of all of our entities, to share everything and have that just as a part of the curriculum without having the extra fees and paying for buses and things like that. To just have all the resources available to you at a minimum cost.

What do you think is the biggest way parents could help teachers do their best?

I would love to see every child represented by a family member at different school events, parent conferences, Latin Heritage Dance Festival at our school, our concert night. I’m calling for it to be standing room only where there was just so many parents, we’re just swamped. Just inundated, I would love that. So every child could be represented by a family member at all of our school events. That would be fantastic.

What’s your main goal for the new school year?

It is, as always, to make sure to give my 100 percent effort. That every child that is enrolled in my class, and even in my grade level, that every child makes progress towards meeting their goals. That no child leaves my classroom or even my grade level at the end of the year without having met their academic goals, their learning goals. And that they know their progress, they know that they made progress and it’s evident in their work, in their product that they produce. That is my goal, to be able to have students know that they have made progress from the first day of school to the last day of school, that they have worked toward meeting their academic and social learning goals.

Rosalie Reyes

This interview is one in a series spotlighting Los Angeles teachers, their unique and innovative classroom approaches, and their thoughts on how the education system can better support teachers in guiding students to success.

Rosalie Reyes has always been proud of her Latin origin. Her parents are from Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic, but this year she wants to focus Hispanic Heritage Month celebrations around Central American history by launching the first-ever Teach Central America Week.

Reyes spent six years teaching in early education classrooms in New York City and Washington, D.C. Last year, she decided to take a new job as a coordinator of teacher engagement and professional development at Teaching for Change, a D.C.-based organization that offers classroom teachers opportunities to enrich their skills and creates lessons to help supplement pre-K–12 curriculum around social justice.

This year, Reyes led the development of a curriculum about Central American history so teachers across the country can bring it into their classrooms during the week of October 7-13.

“So more than 4 million Central Americans reside in the U.S. and yet there is an extreme lack of resources in most schools on Central American heritage that makes the rich history and culture of the region invisible,” Reyes said.

She thinks that given the recent migrant crisis at the border, it’s more important than ever for American students to understand what has led so many Central Americans to flee their home countries.

At one LA Unified high school, nearly 1 in 4 students were unaccompanied minors who emigrated from Central America, according to an LA Times article. The district received an influx of immigrant children from Central and South America in 2013-14.

LA School Report asked Reyes about what could be done better or what needs to change in the education system to allow reforms and innovation to take place in the classroom, as well as her goals for the 2019-20 school year. Her answers have been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Why is it so important for you to ensure that Central American history and culture be incorporated into the school curriculum?

So we at Teaching for Change want this campaign to encourage educators to teach about Central America. Well, we were noting that many of the educators also saw that this was something that was missing. There was a large gap and a disparity around different lessons and books available to them around (say) French-American history or heritage. So our students here and across the country were not seeing themselves reflected in their school experience. So we kind of organized and began to collect different resources to kind of make this available to educators across the country. So the Teach Central America website hosts resources on Central American history. We have lessons from early childhood education to 12th grade. Booklists available for all reading levels and they’re categorized by the different countries in Central America. We have resources around different films, poetry and art, so many different modalities and ways to teach about Central American history and the beauty of the culture of the region.

In teaching immigrant students, how helpful would it be for teachers to incorporate the Central American history curriculum into their lessons? 

I do have experience teaching immigrant students. So this is something that is very important to me. I would say that something helpful for educators is that you can’t teach what you don’t know. A lot of the times when we go into schools, kind of introducing this week of action, we either ask educators, we will hand out a blank map of Central America and ask them to fill in the map and ‘Can you name the seven countries of Central America?’ Many of the times a lot of our teachers have a difficult time naming the countries. So it really tends to be that kind of an eye-opening experience, their own schooling experience and this kind of invigorating time for them to explore it and learn with their students.

So it’s not something that we’re hoping to make educators feel bad about their own knowledge about the region because the reasons that we don’t know is that this is the continued pattern of this eraser in our curriculum. We aren’t taught this history and we’re really excited to kind of have our teachers grow with their students. And so that adults and our students are growing and learning together. Many of the ways that we do that is using history as a key to understanding, like the current events in Central America, especially given the current social, political climate and them receiving a big number of children from Central America.

• Read more: Living in deportation’s shadow: How one Los Angeles charter school grapples with immigration enforcement

As a way to counter that anti-immigration rhetoric that we’re hearing so heavily, we really want educators to explore that history, to explore the role of the United States in Central America and immigration. Kind of unpacking and exploring that history with your middle and high school students.

What do you think the public education system, like school districts or states, can do to better support teachers in better serving this immigrant student population?

So both on the individual and district level, we are hoping the school districts endorse the week, explore these resources, bring them into their teaching and learning communities. Because there’s is an absolute gap that we’re noticing and that it needs to be confronted on a district level.

How can parents and families benefit from their students learning this curriculum? 

I would say we use a lot of children’s literature to kind of explore different regions’ history and culture and the beauty that lives there. So we use that as a way to kind of introduce or explore these different countries and understanding that this can be where the families of some of the students we serve live. And make sure that no matter what race or ethnic background or where you live, that you are offering these windows for your children to know about these different communities.

What is your goal with this initiative?

I would say our goal is, we would love to see this in all schools. In our state (D.C.), if we could really, really push for like a mandate to make this part of the ethnic studies curriculum. To make it a necessity for all students to kind of learn and to really rethink who is centered in our curriculum and making sure that all of the students that we’re serving are represented in what we’re teaching.

So we also oversee SocialJusticeBooks.org, which is originally where we hosted many of our curated booklets and for the Central American-focused story. And we are urging publishers to address the scarcity of books about Central America and by Central American authors. There are really, really a lot of disparities in children’s publications, children’s literature publications and there is a large lack of books that are in print by Central American authors. So we are kind of hoping to organize educators and parents around this issue as we continue to talk about diversity in children’s literature.

• Read more: Teacher Spotlight: Alliance’s Guillermo Lopez on setting higher expectations in math for low-performing students and convincing their teachers that excellence is possible

Diego López has been part of the Los Angeles Unified School District since he began his education in a Head Start program at age 3 when he emigrated from Mexico with his family and settled in LA.

He attended LAUSD schools as a special education student and is now a teacher at Sylvan Park Early Education Center in Van Nuys, where he led the creation of the district’s first early education STEAM — Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Math — program certified by L.A. Unified’s Division of Instruction.

López has been instrumental in making technology accessible to preschoolers. He uses robots, tablets, computers and other electronic devices on a daily basis in class. Students also have science, math and reading classes. His goal in the classroom is letting them explore their own way to learn because he believes that first and foremost, they should have fun while learning to use technology.

When López graduated from high school, he began working as a school volunteer and later as a parent committee coordinator and custodian for about a year at a school in the Valley. But he realized his goal was to become a school leader, so he decided it was time to enroll in community college. He graduated from Los Angeles Valley College with an associate degree in early education, landing his first job as a teacher’s assistant at Noble Early Ed Center. In 2017, he began teaching at Sylvan, where the majority of children are from immigrant families, growing up much like López did.

• Read more: Teacher Spotlight: Alliance’s Guillermo Lopez on setting higher expectations in math for low-performing students and convincing their teachers that excellence is possible

“We should not limit the kids, because when we limit them, we limit what they can do in that area. We don’t let them expand. It’s like with counting. We limit them to count to five and they will want to go just to five. If we don’t give them limits, they’ll go up to whatever number they can do,” he said.

LA School Report asked López about what could be done better or what needs to change in the education system to allow reforms and innovation to take place in the classroom, as well as his goals for the 2019-20 school year. His answers have been lightly edited for length and clarity.

What are your preschool students expected to learn in your classroom?

My expectation of the kids is not to have everything memorized by the end of the year. My expectation (of the kids) is to be exposed. I feel that once they go into the future, go to other schools, once they hear the same content that I exposed them to, it will be much easier for them to understand it and much easier to pick it up. For example, I’m teaching them about the words coding, code and program, and when I talk to other teachers there in elementary school they are like, ‘Oh, you’re using those words.’ Another expectation is that they’re reading, coloring, knowing their shapes and numbers. We always read to the kids because that’s very important.

Their names, we read to them, we show them their names, we have them write it, sign in every single morning. And even if it’s just one line or scribble scrabble to them, that means a signature, that’s their name. What I’ve come to understand is that kids learn on their own and sometimes they learn better at their own pace. And when you give them the opportunity to write their name as they go on, they will eventually understand it and they’ll take more pride that they did it on their own. It wasn’t something that they were forced to do or something that they were guided every single step from beginning to end. We teach them methods when we’re coloring or drawing, but it’s not something we’re forcing them to do, so that it’s something passive.

What things are you doing in your classroom that you consider innovating?

The innovative part comes from me looking up just random things on YouTube about incorporating technology, robots in our classroom, how do I get coding for the kids? So I give them steps. I try to figure out how to make the kids be able to use it. Right now I have them play, make goals. Just make a goal with a ball. That (idea) came because I wanted them to know about their spacial awareness.

The next step will be blocking. I’m teaching them a little bit about some words, some code words, and getting them to understand either by color or code. Some of the computers that we have, we have them accessible (to them) at all times. So some of the kids already know how to turn them on. And there are some people, some adults that don’t know. Like my mom, she doesn’t know how to turn on a computer, but she knows how to use it. But these kids already know this press here, this press here, this press here. They figure it out. Sometimes with some of the teachers right here, (the students are) able to teach adults, they’re able to figure it out because they like to play and that’s all you do. You pretty much play around the things and that’s how you learn.

As adults, we kind of don’t really look into playing around with toys or materials as much. We tend to look more at how do we do this task and what do I need to learn to make this task work and we just want those simple steps. We don’t want to figure out everything else. For the kids, they just want to learn everything.

What has been your best moment or day as a teacher or one of your proudest accomplishments? And what keeps you motivated?

Trying to figure out more about coding. I don’t know, I like having fun in the classroom. I feel if I’m having fun, the kids are having fun. I’m not comfortable in a classroom and they’re probably not comfortable. Because some kids are — they will still be playing even though they’re having a hard time. But for me is — if I’m having fun and I’m learning — they’re doing the same thing. What keeps me motivated is … just having fun pretty much. Just having fun in the classroom.

What do you think either your school or the school district or even the state could do differently to better support teachers? 

Teaching the importance of technology. I think more of a personal training as to how to use the devices more often. Because what we got was the Chromebooks (from the district) I never used a Chromebook before, so I had to learn and figure out how to do certain things. Some teachers didn’t want to use them at the beginning, for an entire month. They had them and they didn’t even touch them. So I was just doing little workshops with them during lunchtime on ‘This is how you copy, this is how you print, this is how you make a new page, this is how you type it in, this is how you open it up, turn it on.’ Those basic skills and now they’re all using them. So I think when they give out new technology or new material they need to provide a little bit more training on it. And it’s not more of just like the standards, because they do teach us about the standards and the reasoning for why we’re using these materials. But the thing is also a little bit more of hands-on (training). I know once we get into those little steps of beginning and interacting over them (devices) and using them, the teachers are more willing to accept the technology.

What do you think is the biggest way parents could help you and other teachers in helping your students succeed? 

Well, I would say our parents help out a lot because already they are involved in the classroom. The parents don’t need to come and be in the classroom all eight hours or an entire day. It’s just them asking questions in the classroom like ‘Hey, tell me about this picture you drew’ and the kids just go and show them a picture. So the parents being in the classroom and showing interest in the student’s work allows the students to enjoy what they’re doing and like what they’re doing and makes the kids feel they’re appreciated for what they’re doing.

And at home, just read to them, talk to them, how’s their life going? How’s school life going? Parents if they have questions or concerns, they could come and talk to us. Some parents don’t know who to ask. The best person to go ask is a teacher. Sometimes the teacher has all these services, all of these opportunities, all these resources. It’s just that we don’t know what they want unless they come and ask us.

What are the major challenges faced by your students in their community?

We serve a low-income community, they don’t have access (to technology), not every parent has iPads. Not every parent has robots. They can’t afford $100 or $150 robots. And so we’re giving them those things that the kids need. We are exposing them to that at an early age, (things) that otherwise, they might not be able to get at home.

• Read more: Teacher spotlight: Telfair Elementary’s Rita Ontiveros on being a ‘positive rock’ for low-income and homeless students, the need for more nurses and counselors, and what’s really happening in a kindergarten classroom

You were a special ed student. How does that help you in paying attention to the special needs of your students?

I think for me it’s more just not trying to get (students) on straight into special ed. It’s getting to understand the child and what they need. Because some kids they could function normal if they have what they need. There are some kids, they just need one little toy to hold onto the entire day or one little pillow or just this one certain person, and they can function normally. It’s just finding out what they need … I’m always trying to see how can we work with (those) kids, provide them with the services before we even try to push them into special ed. I was in special ed, but I didn’t need all the full services. I just needed a little bit more time to work on my English. I needed a little bit more time to catch up. For us teachers, if a child needs more time, then we give them more time. And that’s the way we run our classrooms, we run them on what the kids need. If they need bigger crayons, we give them bigger crayons and if they need different puzzles, we find the puzzles they need. If they need their own time-space, then we give them their own time. It’s by finding out what they need and how can we help them out.

What do you think is the most misunderstood part about your job?

Yeah, they (people) think I’m just here babysitting or just playing around with the kids. And the thing is that we’re not just playing around with them. We’re teaching them at the same time because our curriculum is set and we go by the curriculum, but it’s not just also following the curriculum exactly the way it’s written in the book. It’s adding to the curriculum, finding out what works in the break room and what works with my students. To me, to make up my lesson plan, it takes me up to an hour or two hours and we already have the lesson plans written, but I know that that lesson plan is not set to my students because we have 3-year-olds, 2-year-olds, 4-year-olds and 5-year-olds … We have all four different ages and each child’s at a different level. The books that are set for preschool to cover all of the ages. The thing is we have to take our time, figure out what our students need and how can we incorporate the lesson plan to their needs and to their level. And that’s what takes a bit of time, just making it, understanding our kids. First understanding the kids and then incorporate it onto their level.

What is the biggest thing that you think needs attention or needs to change in the education system? 

One thing I know is that we tend to work through materials a lot faster. Yes, we may use technology a lot more, but that doesn’t mean that we stop the kids from writing and coloring because those are consumable materials that they can just love to write and color on. They’ll go get paper and color it in and they’ll draw something and then they want another one to go and color it in and each one may look different, the papers, they all mean different things. They draw different stories, different things, different pictures. And if you ask a child, ‘What is that?’ they’ll tell you an entire different story.

We should not limit the kids, because when we limit them, we limit what they can do in that area. We don’t let them expand. It’s like with counting, we limit them to count to five they will want to go to five. We don’t give them limits and they’ll go up to whatever number they can do.

It’s always about how I’m making the materials work for the kids, (the materials) are not going to work for the kids themselves. So even if we bring it to the kids, let’s say if I bring them a computer, they’re eventually going to figure out how to make it work, but we can not give them something that’s directed for an adult. We could get them those materials, at the same time making it work for them, making it accessible to them.

What’s your goal for the next school year?

I do want to continue teaching early ed grades because I want to be able to teach them about technology and see how far, how much I could teach them about technology. And now I want to see if I could teach them (software) coding. I want to get some kids into code.org and start being able to do block coding. Since I have the 5-year-olds this year, I want to see if I could get them to do block coding already. So I want to, these kids already, the ones in my classroom, they already come with a basic knowledge of the robots, so it will be one step closer to the coding now. For me personally, I think I just want to go back to Valley College and take some classes on coding. Maybe get a certification outside of school about security script certification.

Guillermo Lopez, left, math specialist at Alliance Judy Ivie Burton Technology Academy, with one of his students.

Guillermo Lopez has one expectation for all his students, including the ones with the most challenges to learn, and that is to achieve high scores in mathematics. It’s a subject he’s passionate about teaching — not just to students but also to other teachers. He believes that getting to know students individually and understanding their community is key for even the lowest-performing students to reach proficiency.

Over the last three years as a math specialist at Alliance Judy Ivie Burton Technology Academy, a charter high school in South Los Angeles, Lopez has seen “tremendous growth” in his students’ math scores on CAASPP, the California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress. The state test measures grade-level learning in English and math for students in grades 3-8 and 11th grade.

Burton Tech’s scores went from 34 percent of students meeting and exceeding math standards in 2015 to over 47 percent last year. That’s higher than the 32 percent of L.A. Unified students who scored proficient in math districtwide and the 39 percent who scored proficient across the state.

Lopez credits those gains to the creation of support systems that ensure student subgroups, such as English learners and students with Individualized Education Plans (IEP), can thrive in the classroom, including behavioral intervention, emotional support and offering credit recovery courses. It also includes offering college enrichment courses for the highest- performing students.

• Read more: New ways of teaching math to California’s English learners are getting results, report says

“We’re actually really focusing on multiple subgroups of students. And what I mean is that most schools support the middle students, but we’re also taking a really close look at our lower students, our students who in the past have really struggled with academics, and we’ve provided different programs for them,” he said.

Lopez grew up in Mid-City Los Angeles, attending public schools in Culver City Unified. He was accepted to UCLA with a Gates Millenium Scholarship, where he was able to tutor other Latino students who were members of student organizations such as MEChA, the Mexican American student group, and Latinos Unidos. It was then he discovered his passion for teaching math. To get the education he needed to become a teacher he went to Stanford University to complete his master’s degree in math education.

Lopez has spent 10 years teaching. Early in his career, he taught math at a traditional school in the Bay Area before returning to Los Angeles to work at Alliance Marc and Eva Stern Math and Science School for six years. At Burton Tech, which serves a 96 percent Latino student population and where nearly all students are classified as socioeconomically disadvantaged, he has spent the last three years teaching and coaching other math teachers.

Lopez says that “really getting to know the students, their culture and giving them a voice at the school” has helped Burton Tech to reach its goals. For the next school year, he expects to continue showing that, “students from these communities can really accomplish a lot.”

LA School Report asked Lopez about what could be done better or what needs to change in the education system to allow reforms and innovation to take place in the classroom, as well as his goals for next school year. His answers have been lightly edited for length and clarity.

What kind of challenges do your students face and what kind of support are you offering in the classroom?

We’re really looking at students from multiple points. We’re not only looking at their data in terms of, these are the numbers, these are the test scores, but we’re taking time looking at the students in particular, like specifically groups of students, and we’re doing a type of model where we do behavior intervention. We do circles, which is where we take time away from our instruction, like five or 10 minutes, and we do circles within the classroom, where they talk about their emotional intelligence and different things like this. We’re trying to really get to know the students and their culture, and give them a voice here at the school.

In terms of training the teachers, we have constant professional developments around just different things that they will need in terms of social-emotional aspects. I know we have an on-site counselor, like a school psychologist, that comes in for those PDs for the teachers. So we’re really trying to train the teachers to really understand the students. And not only just that they’re students but (also understanding) their communities.

All those things play a role into really helping the students and their community. In the beginning of the year, we meet as a school and we talk about the culture of our school, we talk about our students, where they come from, and we really emphasize the importance of building culture into our classrooms.

What are you or your school doing now that is innovative and working for the students? 

So for unique, I think it’s just constant research. I would say that is when you get to know what the students’ interests are, what their hobbies are, and when you can apply some of that into the classroom, it can really make it innovative. For example, I know right now what’s really big with students is social media, technology, because once you have the students engaged into your content and in your classroom, there is so much more learning that can happen in this.

We’re also taking a really close look at our students who in the past have really struggled with academics. We have credit recovery programs for them. We have support for our EL students and our special ed students. We are working with the Jaime Escalante program at East Los Angeles College. This is a math program, and what we do here is we actually bring in enrichment programs throughout the whole year.

So we’re actually advancing the students to a point where they’re taking college-level math courses by the time they’re seniors, beyond calculus, we’re doing multivariable calculus, which is like a second year of college-level math. And the only way they were doing that is because these students are committing Monday through Saturday for five hours a day to get additional time in mathematics. So they’re actually skipping two grade levels because of that program. And now, by the time they graduate, they actually on their transcript will have two levels of math classes that are college-approved that will advance them even more in college.

We look at data as well. We know our students individually based on that data. Not only do we know them personally, but we actually create plans to see what we can do to support them. So I would say that’s what makes us unique, and fortunately, in this last year we’ve got a few awards, like the California Distinguished Award. We got a STEAM award, we got another award, I think it was through USC. Because of that, our principal got Principal of the Year award for all the things that we’ve been doing here.

What do you think will be the biggest thing that either a school or a school district, or the state, could do better in supporting educators for success?

I would say they’re on the right track, but I think the best way is to really help educators understand the expectations of the Common Core for Californians. Part of my work is that I’ve retrained a lot of teachers who are used to the old (testing) models. So a lot of teachers think that that’s the way that they should still teach. And what’s happening with the charter schools and district (schools) is that now they have a new expectation called the CAASPP, and so it’s just a different playing field. I think a lot of times, Alliance, for example, and the other districts, have these expectations but they don’t give the teachers time and space to actually re-learn and to get better. So I think the biggest thing is providing the time and space for them to really learn and to do these things well.

What do you think is the biggest issue in the public education system right now?

Sometimes the politics behind what’s expected at a district level to the school level to the student level. So the politics, in terms of I know that there’s a lot of moving parts, but I think sometimes unfortunately, they forget that we’re here for the students. And the politics that get involved — in terms of like financial, budgets, the politics behind maybe the union, or the politics behind just certain policies — sometimes those get in the way and hinder the process of learning for students. I think that’s one of the biggest hurdles.

How easy or difficult is the process that you had to go through to become an educator was?

I wouldn’t say it’s an easy process. I would say that there are definitely obstacles. When I work with teachers and I talk to colleagues and friends, it can be a difficult process, but sometimes you have to seek those opportunities. I think the hurdle, the biggest one that I’ve heard of, is the financial hurdle. The other one is also just finding good mentors and good schools to work at. I’ve talked to many teachers who’ve been burned out the first few years or who’ve had a really bad experience, who had that passion that I have, but because they had a really bad experience, then they think that teaching is like that in every school, and then unfortunately, we lose those teachers.

What do you think so far is the most misunderstood thing about the teaching profession? 

I think the most misunderstood thing is how much time and vocation goes into being a really good teacher. I think there’s this big misconception when people say, “Oh teaching is easy.” I always joke around saying that people who say that haven’t been really a teacher or really a good teacher, because to be a really good teacher you have to spend a lot of time in planning and grading, working with students, calling parents, staying after school, before school. So I think the big misconception around that is just the dedication and passion it really takes to be a good teacher. And again, I work with really passionate teachers who come here early in the morning, stay here at night, and even then they’re really hard on themselves because they feel they could do more.

What would be the best way parents can help teachers better serve their students?

I would say the best way is just to also get educated in terms of the expectations, and also just know the expectations of not only their current school, high school and middle school and so forth, but be aware of the expectations beyond that, like from college and so forth. I think that the biggest successes I’ve had with parents are the ones who actually know what is the expectation of college. So the more educated they are in terms of what goes beyond the secondary level is really helpful.

What would you like the public to know about how it is working at a charter school or in general about charter schools?

I would say there’s a big misconception that charter schools are bad and they take away students from other public schools and so forth, and I think that the message I would say is that charter schools are just another opportunity for these same students in the communities to flourish in a way that sometimes they’re not given. So I’m not saying anything bad against public traditional schools, because I have worked at those schools and I think some of them are great, but I think charter schools are just another opportunity for some students to have a different climate, different culture, with less students, so that they can really flourish.

What’s been your greatest accomplishment?

I would say when I got Teacher of the Year through Alliance a few years ago. It was a big accomplishment because I love teaching and I was able to be recognized for the work that I was doing. It was admin and different school superintendents who would come to my classroom and they would see a model of what it should be. And this was a few years ago before the full Common Core transition happened. I really think it’s an accomplishment, because I was able to show leaders what a Common Core classroom could look like. Often in these communities you see students who are low (performing) and then unfortunately, they have the expectation that they can’t do math, or they can’t pursue a certain level of math. But what I tried to do is really create lessons and structures, so they would actually think it was an honors class, but I would tell them that it was a support class, these are the lowest (performing) students. So I think for me that was the biggest accomplishment, because I was able to highlight the students more than myself, in showing them that these students from these communities can really accomplish a lot. I consider myself a student from these communities.

What is your main goal for the next school year?

My goal is to create a great system where teachers are supported, build capacity and really help educate and make these teachers even stronger. And then just numbers goals. I really want to reach a really high level on the CAASPP, not because it’s just a test, but because I want to show that our students, even the lower (performing) ones, can really reach that high level of mathematics.

• Read more: LA parent voice: How can my kids be honor roll students and still not read or do math at grade level?

Maria Duarte

*Updated

With the purpose of promoting an inclusive school culture, where all students feel safe, Maria Duarte is leading a study group at her school that is incorporating LGBTQ literature. She believes that by integrating such reading material into her classroom even her younger students can become agents of social change.

Duarte, 32, is a third-grade special education teacher at Camino Nuevo Charter Academy Kayne Siart Campus, a K-8 public charter school located near downtown Los Angeles. The school serves an overwhelming majority of Latino students from immigrant families just like Duarte, who emigrated from Mexico to the United States at age 5 with her parents and settled in L.A. She grew up attending public schools and then went on to earn a bachelor’s degree in psychology from UCLA and later, her master’s in special education.

For four years, she worked as a teacher’s assistant at another charter school until she got hired at Camino Nuevo, where she has been teaching for the last three years.

Last year, she participated in The Reading and Writing Project at Columbia University’s Teachers College, looking at how gender roles are expressed in literature. She knew that her classroom’s book inventory was “very heteronormative and not quite as diverse,” so she started the study groups to include LGBTQ literature.

“I just think kids having books that either they can relate to personally or that allows them to relate to people who are different from them is a crucial way to start to have those conversations,” Duarte said. “We framed it as, it’s actually about how to create an inclusive, safe environment for all students and how are we promoting that students also go out and be social agents of change when they’re older.”

LA School Report asked Duarte about what could be done better or what needs to change in the education system to allow reforms and innovation to take place in the classroom, as well as her goals for next school year. Her answers have been lightly edited for length and clarity.

What’s the main purpose of these study groups?

It’s a group of five other teachers that are interested in learning more about the topic and kind of going through an inquiry cycle to develop our own practices as educators to then impact students. And so early on in that year, we started to also explore topics of LGBTQ identity and characters. And so what we wanted to do is really question and have other educators question the books that they have in their library. And then question what kind of narratives as educators, we’re valuing. Because as a teacher, when I choose to do a read-aloud about a topic, a student sees that as a valid narrative. So what stories are we exposing our students to, what are we showing how to value. And then also what stories and what books are we not reading in our classrooms because not reading those books is also sending a message to our students.

If you think about the amount of suicide that happen for LGBTQ-plus youth, it’s some scary number. And if you think about life expectancy for trans people, it’s also scary and then you have to ask yourself, what is it about our society that’s making a group of people feel isolated? What as educators can we do so that those feelings of isolation go away or at least diminish a bit? So I just think kids having books that either they can relate to personally or that allow them to relate to people who are different from them is a crucial way to start to have those conversations.

• Read more: The State of LGBTQ Curriculum: Tide Is Turning as Some States Opt for Inclusion, Others Lift Outright Restrictions

How do the study groups work for the younger students versus the ones in higher grades?

That was another concern that we had heard about families: how do you make this topic or this theme age-appropriate, what are my kindergarten students going to be learning about as opposed to middle school students? … So what the study group did was we took, we broke down the grade center, grade-level span. And so obviously, if you’re in a kindergarten class, you’re not going to have, you might not be reading about a thing that’s a little bit more sophisticated, like identity, or having a character who is transgender might not be as developmentally appropriate in kindergarten. But instead, something that’s definitely appropriate. What is already happening a lot in our kindergarten classes is that they talk a lot about family structure. However, when family structure is talked about a lot of times in the lower grades it’s always fairly heteronormative. So we talked about how what they could be doing is also talking about how there are different family structures that sometimes include a mom and a mom or dad and a dad and how those are appropriate conversations to have at that age.

And then for the older students, they’re more complex. We got a lot of books for parents to see. So I think a lot of the pushback was just speaking from a sense of not really knowing. So once we collaborated and take those workshops and do stuff like ask us questions, read through the book, see how we thought about it being developmentally appropriate and also tying it into our standards, they felt much more comfortable.

What would you say are some of the major challenges that your students face in their community?

We do have a high population of English learners at our school and I would say that, especially in recent years, one big issue that has been happening to our students has to do with immigration. We’ve had a lot of, unfortunately, family separations due to deportation this year. So I would say that’s one big area or topic that’s been really impacting the community that I serve. We have also thought about how we can be sensitive to the things that are going on outside of our community and the classroom. So what books or what things can I talk about in the classroom that allow our students to process something so traumatic as a family separation. What spaces are we offering in that classroom so that kids feel safe and feel they have a space to talk about those things if they’re affecting them? We do have a really awesome family coordinator at our site and she does a lot of collaborating with outside agencies to find resources for families. So she’s also been instrumental in helping us think through what we need to do.

• Read more: Living in deportation’s shadow: How one Los Angeles charter school grapples with immigration enforcement

When did you know that you wanted to be a teacher?

I think it definitely started when I was younger. I remember always wanting to play the teacher. I just thought it was so cool. I just remember always being so fascinated by the teacher and always looking up. I think specifically my fifth-grade teacher, I always remember the connection that she had with all the students. And how safe I felt in her classroom. Since early on I always thought it was so cool to get to work with people, especially young children, and being in an environment where it was joyful. I think that always drove me to teach.

Is there any memory that stands out for you most from your first day of teaching? Or your first year? How was it?

I remember just how I was so excited and was so ready to teach that lesson. And I remember how one of the students was pushing back and I remember feeling, ‘OK, what is happening? Why is the student acting that way?’ And I remember just being so naive in the beginning. I feel like my lens for really difficult moments with students is so different now. Now, I think about what is happening with this student? What is their behavior communicating to me? What is it that they need? But I remember that first day when I first walked in the classroom, I remember not having that knowledge, I guess. And I remember just thinking this is hard. I thought this was going to be way easier, but it was hard. I always think about that and then, my first year professionally teaching, I always think about how much I grew as an educator that year and also how much my students grew.

What do you think is most misunderstood about your job? What’s the biggest difference you see in people’s perception about teaching?

I think the most common misconception is, I always hear, ‘Oh, you work with kids. It must be so easy or your job isn’t that stressful. You do fun activities and do this and that.’ And I feel it’s always just so downplayed how much we actually do in the teaching profession. Because I always see my job as I’m not just teaching content about math or reading or whatever. That’s not my big goal when I’m in front of a classroom of students. My big goal is what skills and what critical thinking abilities am I allowing my students to develop? How is this going to make them citizens that go off into the world and can make an impact? And I feel so many times when people think about teaching and the teaching profession, they don’t include that aspect.

What has been your best moment or best day as a teacher? What’s one of your proudest accomplishments?

I think this past year, one of my best memories and honestly my whole career, it was working with this student who had dyslexia. So, she was reading below grade level and I remember how that started to really impact the image she had of herself. And I remember having a conversation with my co-teacher and just really thinking about what can we do for her as a person that’s a learner to make sure that she feels confident and empowered about herself and doesn’t feel bad because she’s struggling to read. So we first talked to her mom and we presented this idea of having her and I (teach her classmates) about dyslexia. So that would mean having a conversation with her and explaining to her what dyslexia was. And so her and I would do research on dyslexia and what it was and famous people who have dyslexia. I just remember her being transformed by that experience because before that she didn’t understand, she didn’t know that she had dyslexia, and that that was the reason that she was having a difficult time. But I think knowing that she had dyslexia makes her feel, OK, it’s not that there’s something wrong with me, it’s just a learning difficulty I have. So the last day of school, she presented to the whole class about dyslexia and it was just such an awesome moment to see her feel empowered in front of her peers, and also see how the other students were so curious and wanted to know more and were super supportive of her. So I think that has been one of the coolest moments (for me) as an educator.

What do you think your school organization, the school district, even this state, could do better to support educators?

I guess I always think about finances and resources. How are we equipping our classrooms with the resources, with the money that schools need in order to properly be able to give students a rich education? So I think about — since I’m a special ed teacher, but I co-teach in classrooms because we have an inclusive setting. So, I’m very grateful to my administrators because they view it as an important thing in our school that we’re inclusive and they definitely feel or they value inclusive education so they therefore value being able to have special education teachers in the classroom. But I have also seen the struggle to get special education teachers so that we’re each only co-teaching in one grade level because the more co-teaching happens, the more we’re able to impact students. However, sometimes because they’re isn’t enough money in the budget or resources for us to pull from, it’s kind of hard to do all the work and impact the students in the way in which you want to impact them. If you’re limited, if I have to go and co-teach in multiple grade levels and multiple classrooms, it limits my ability to be very personable and impactful for one classroom. So I feel that’s been the hardest thing.

What do you think should be changed if something should be changed in the process of entering the teaching profession? Was it hard for you? Was it easy? What do you think will make it easier for new teachers to come into the profession?

I think definitely something that I noticed and feel very passionate about actually is when I went and I did my preparation program with the focus on special education, it was very different from the preparation that my colleagues, who are general education teachers, have gotten. So it’s challenging to serve all students. When you think about how general ed teachers and special education teachers are taught, I think they’re two separate things. So there needs to be much more collaboration. I feel that separating us from the start, that’s challenging for all teachers to feel successful teaching a variety of students.

• Read more: 3 Ways NYU Is Training New Teachers to Use Special Ed and ELL Strategies to Better Serve All Kids

What can parents do to help you in doing a better job?

Well, I think parents should just always be open-minded and want to collaborate with teachers. I love when our families are able to come — and even if it’s sit in on our lesson — because then that helps them know how to support their student at home. And then the same thing when we collaborate with parents … having a better understanding of that student as an individual, because families know those kids like nobody else. So I feel that collaboration that exists with teachers and families is just as important for us the teachers as it is for parents. I feel when those two things come together, it’s really powerful.

As a charter school teacher, is there anything you wish people better understood about charters in general?

Yeah, I feel recently there’s been a lot of backlash to charter schools, and I just want the narrative to not be about why charter schools are bad, but about why any school is failing. It’s not just about charter schools, it’s about any school. Because at the end of the day, we’re also a public organization that serves all students. It’s not necessarily the charter school versus public school mentality that I think has kind of come out from the (teacher) strike.

• Read more: Research shows that charter schools do best for California’s low-income and minority students. Now state officials are considering slowing their expansion

Do you have any particular goals for next school year?

Yes, so next school year, we’ll just continue to work with this study group, something that we kind of left off as a next step is also studying and thinking through this idea of toxic masculinity. I think we’ve been seeing this research and thinking about gender roles, LGBTQ issues, how is that going to translate to student impact? How are we going to disseminate all that information that we learn to make teachers feel prepared or ready to have conversations with their students? And then, what is the outcome for students? Because at the end of the day, all of this studying and researching things is really for the impact it’s going to have on students. Is this going to create critical thinkers? Is this going to impact students to go out and have social change (happen) out in the world? So I think those are cool next steps.

For me, I always just want to continue learning about how to serve the student, not just academically, but also socially and emotionally. … I’m seeing that in a lot of our student population, it’s not as simple as teaching academic content, but it’s also, how are you supporting students socially and emotionally to feel as safe and successful as they can your classroom?

• Read more: Patel: 11 Back-to-School Tips to Help Parents Give Their Kids the Social-Emotional Skills They Need

* This article has been updated to correct that Duarte was not recruited and placed through Teach for America.

Alliance Marine Innovation & Technology 6-12 Complex’s special ed teacher Molly Carmody Career and her companion dog Boomer(Photo: Molly Carmody)

This interview is one in a series spotlighting Los Angeles teachers, their unique and innovative classroom approaches, and their thoughts on how the education system can better support teachers in guiding students to success.

Early in her career as a special education teacher, Molly Carmody knew her most vulnerable students needed additional support in the classroom. They needed someone capable of meeting their multiple physical and emotional needs to help them break down their learning barriers. Her solution was to get a furry and four-legged helper.

After a long process of applications, interviews and intense training to get an official certification, Carmody brought Boomer – a golden retriever companion dog – to her classroom at Alliance Milt and Debbie Valera Middle Academy. The middle school, located in Sun Valley, is part of the Alliance Marine-Innovation and Technology 6-12 Complex. Nearly 17 percent of its students require special education services. That’s 30 percent more than the 13 percent overall at L.A. Unified. The average across Alliance is 10 percent.  

“My scholars have academic and social-emotional needs that intersect in very significant ways,” Carmody says. “I decided that a dog could break down walls in ways that I couldn’t do alone, but it wasn’t until I joined Alliance that this idea became something in the realm of possibility.” 

She says having Boomer in the classroom could only be a reality when a school’s leadership fosters innovation and provides the right resources and support for teachers to find new ways of getting better results for their students. She says she found that at Valera Academy, and last school year her idea became a “huge accomplishment” as the companion dog has helped create a classroom culture that fosters students’ learning.

Carmody, 27, has been a resource specialist, teaching students with high needs, for the last two years at Valera’s College & Career Readiness Center – the first small classroom setting for intensive, individualized learning across the Alliance College-Ready Public Schools network. She says as soon as she joined Alliance, she presented the idea of having a companion dog to the principal. He welcomed the idea and almost immediately they started with the process that took about a year from when the application was submitted to when Boomer actually got into the classroom.

But the companion dog idea was born when she began teaching nearly four years ago at Gompers Middle School, a traditional district-run school in South L.A., where she was placed through Teach for America, a nonprofit that recruits recent college graduates to teach for two years in low-income schools across the country.

Her students at Gompers made her seriously consider having a companion dog in the classroom. “They didn’t have a safe person to talk to and wondered what I could do about it, and something I know about dogs is they have healing power. Just having animals around you it teaches you empathy. It teaches you certain things that a teacher can’t teach,” Carmody said. 

“I started to see the need for social-emotional support and the lack of that support being given to students who are the most vulnerable in communities that are experiencing high levels of trauma.”

Carmody, who grew up attending Torrance Unified public schools in the South Bay area, where her mom was also a public school teacher, was matched with Boomer through Canine Companions for Independence (CCI), a nonprofit that breeds, trains and matches highly trained service dogs to people with special needs. 

An eighth grader in class with Boomer and special ed teacher Molly Carmody at Alliance Marine Innovation & Technology 6-12 Complex’s Career and College Readiness Center. (Photo: Alliance-College Ready Schools)

Boomer lays over a student’s legs when the student needs to be calmed, and he is capable of helping students turn book pages with his nose and fetches hearing aids and glasses. He can also pick up dropped items, turn lights on and off and open doors. But Carmody says that most importantly, Boomer offers emotional support to the students by simply being present in the classroom. 

“He knows when someone needs some love,” Carmody says. “At the start of each school day, he is waiting at the door to shake their hands and say good morning.” 

LA School Report asked Carmody what can be done better or what needs to change in the education system to allow reforms and innovation to take place in the classroom, as well as what keeps her motivated to teach. Her answers have been lightly edited for length and clarity. 

Why did you believe a companion dog was the best way to help your students?

My students at Gompers were having challenges even coming to school and functioning in an academic setting with all this emotional stuff that wasn’t worked through. I was a first-year teacher so I was still learning a lot, but something I noticed was that students were supposed to have counseling minutes and these counseling minutes weren’t met or we didn’t have a consistent person on campus, like one person throughout the year that was talking to them and meeting those minutes. It was multiple people or people were quitting and other people were coming in. I noticed there wasn’t a safe person for students to talk to, that goes back to the burnout, so that made me think what I could do about it.

What can you share about your current students? Is there any particular social issues they face?  

In terms of demographics, they’re mostly Latinx. There’s a smaller population that’s bused in from local communities, but Sun Valley, in particular, is mostly Latinx.

What I’ve experienced in our communities, students have parents who really care, who are hard workers and not necessarily educated by our standards. It’s hard for us to get the parent support that’s required these days of a college-going mindset. Because the parents want to be there and are supportive in a lot of ways, but academically it’s hard for some of the parents to support them in the ways that they need to get ahead. I think the biggest thing that I’ve seen is just parents who are very hardworking, but a challenge is them being present in some cases.

What is your school doing that is innovative?

In my second year at Alliance, I started a self-contained class because most of Alliance schools don’t have self-contained classes. It’s all traditional. Everyone’s in the same class and they get pulled out for resource support. But we started it because some of our students have higher needs. We call them MVPs, most vulnerable students. Other Alliance schools have created Career and College Readiness Centers, but ours was the first one to get fully funded by LAUSD and then continued getting funded into the following year because our data looked really good. Our students made a lot of progress and so we got funded again. After my first year, we actually got funded to start it at our high school. It’s been growing and that’s been really cool to see as well.

What does a normal day look like with your students in your class?

This year was really interesting because we got two students who are on the alternative curriculum. This was what really blew me away about my school — the lengths that our principal and our administration took to make sure that these students accessed learning in an environment that wasn’t necessarily cut out for them.

We got two students who are on the old curriculum and they came in and we actually hired a nurse to meet their physical needs. A lot of schools have a hard time getting nurses on campus. You could say that obviously, the nurse supports all students, but the reason she’s there is for these students. It was really awesome that we got a nurse. Getting these two new students really forced us to reflect on how the classroom’s run and really adjust to meet their needs. But basically, for a typical student that’s in the general education population, they would be with me for English and then a class called literacy and transition where it’s some life skills sort of things and literacy. 

What could your school, LAUSD or the state do differently to better support your students to be successful?

To better support students with special needs? Well, I think all I can speak to is what I’ve seen and the drastic difference that I was talking about from the district school and the school I’m at now. The way I see it, I know there’s a lot of schools in the middle. I think I experienced maybe one of the most challenging schools in LAUSD, a lot of people would argue. And then, now I’m at one of the top-performing charter schools in my experience.

And so I think a lot of from what I’ve seen in the district, it seems as though there’s a lack of accountability on where money is allocated. I think that ends up hurting the students and the teachers. There’s a lot of burnout because of the lack of support and resources. I think teachers come in and want to give their all and really do put a lot of money, time and invest a lot of themselves into this profession. They see how quickly how challenging that is to continue without adequate support and get burned out. I think within special education especially, it’s hard for teachers to get good at their jobs long enough.

Because people say it takes five years to become a good teacher or to become a teacher that knows what they’re doing. In special education, teachers are leaving way before that by year two or three, because it’s so much to handle. I think that there are so many different things that play into that. There’s racial stuff, implications of students going into special education because of their behavior versus their actual need for special education services. I think that’s a huge thing that’s a disservice to our students, especially our black and brown students.

I think there’s a lot of schools that are in the middle that have great things going for them, but also challenges. But I think I saw some of the biggest challenges within the district and then some of the most amazing things.

What is most misunderstood about your job? What’s the biggest difference between people’s perception or what you have heard from people about the teaching profession? 

People think a special education class looks a certain way, when in reality if you talk to five or 10 different special ed educators, you’re going to have completely different experiences, completely different student groups and completely different needs. Same with a general education teacher. You talk to general education teachers from five different places and even if they teach the same subject, same grade, five completely different people groups even within LA. Because we’re so diverse, completely different needs and completely different ways of doing things that they’ve figured works for them or is working in the short term. I guess there’s a misconception of what educators do.

What’s your best day or your proudest accomplishment as a teacher? 

Definitely this year. I felt very accomplished after successfully having our program re-funded for a second year. But I think I felt the most accomplished by getting the service dog for my classroom and seeing my students at graduation. I went to a two-week professional development to learn how to handle the dog and get connected with the dog. And the students came after those two weeks to a little ceremony and I felt really proud. I was really excited to see them there and to celebrate that milestone for us of getting this dog. 

And also in the last five months of having him just seeing the breakthrough from our students and seeing what a good choice it was. Because I think in a lot of ways I had to sacrifice a lot in having a dog. It’s a very different lifestyle. But seeing how it’s really developed our classroom culture and our school in a lot of ways, I think has been a huge accomplishment.

The students really like walking him around our school. They take pride in him. The whole school loves him. He was showcased in our yearbook, and he’s just been such a blessing to our school. I think I’m still learning how to incorporate him in other ways, but I’m happy so far with how things are going.

What would you like the public to know about charter schools in general or particularly about your school?

I can only speak to my school and I think there are a lot of valid concerns around charters. I think a general misconception is that charter schools are stealing students from the district. When I think from a parent’s perspective, a parent is going to put their child where they feel their child is going to be taken care of the best and the safest. I think there are amazing teachers in the district that are really trying to push forward and fight and make and create change. A lot of times, the charters are getting funding that the district schools aren’t seeing. I think what’s challenging about that is even when there is more funding, because there can always be more money, especially within LAUSD, somehow it doesn’t get to the students and the teachers. I don’t think more money is the issue. 

Personally, I just think there’s a miscommunication. There are valid concerns about finances within the charter and how charters are funded. But something I can’t say about the district that I can about the charter is that I’ve never needed a piece of paper at the school I’m at. I’ve never needed to buy my own pencils for students.

When did you know that you wanted to be a teacher, and how easy or difficult was it to actually enter the profession? 

I knew I wanted to be a teacher probably when I transferred from the junior college I was at. I think in California we have the highest standards for teachers to become teachers with all the tests you have to take and all the hoops we have to jump through. I have my masters and I’m still not fully credentialed. I have my credential, but I’m clearing it at the moment. I think there’s so many hoops to jump through and things you have to do to become a fully credentialed teacher. I think that it’s good in some ways, but it’s also really repetitive in a lot of ways. There’s a lot of tests and some people aren’t great at taking tests that would make amazing teachers. I know people who had the desire to be a teacher and couldn’t pass some of the tests that are required. They tried multiple times and couldn’t do it. So now they’re pursuing different things. I think it’s challenging to become a teacher. The route I took was different with Teach for America. 

What’s your main goal for the next school year?

I’m transitioning from being just a middle school teacher to teaching both middle school and high school. Instead of me doing all English and literacy and transition for just middle school and my colleague doing the same thing for high school, we’re splitting it down the middle. She’s going to do all English and I’m going to do all literacy and transition for middle school and high school.

I think the idea behind that is becoming really, really good at instructing one thing or two things versus teaching multiple subjects and kind of being OK at them. I think it gives us a chance as educators to focus and hone in on our skills, like our lesson planning and actually doing the lessons well and focusing on student growth and student outcomes in one area versus having to juggle a lot of different multiple roles. Our school is really trying to take the load off and in different ways and the resources we do have so that we can get really good at the things we are doing. 

LA Unified’s Felicitas and Gonzalo Mendez High School computer science teacher Alicia Morris. (Photo: MfALA.org)

This interview is one in a series spotlighting Los Angeles teachers, their unique and innovative classroom approaches, and their thoughts on how the education system can better support teachers in guiding students to success.

Alicia Morris’s career as a production auditor in Hollywood was in full swing when she became a parent and decided to switch to a more “meaningful” profession. She says it didn’t take her long to realize that teaching could have “more of an impact locally within a community,” so she worked to become a teacher.  

Morris has now been teaching for nearly two decades at L.A. Unified schools, half the time at the elementary level and the last 10 years as a math and computer science teacher at Felicitas and Gonzalo Mendez High School – one of the 18 schools in the Partnership for Los Angeles Schools. Mendez, located in Boyle Heights in east Los Angeles, is one of the most improved schools and has one of the highest graduation rates in the district (90 percent in 2018). 

At Mendez, Morris has focused on helping her students, mostly low-income Latinos, gain access to technology and computer science courses. She believes all students in California should have the same opportunity and that all schools across the state should offer computer science courses.

She says for that to happen there should be “a balance between the policies and the reality of the work” and more funding at the state level. At the district level, she thinks more teachers should have credentialing opportunities to teach those courses. “If we don’t have the course selection and we don’t have the credentials for the teachers to teach the courses, it’s not going to happen.”

California adopted its first-ever computer science standards last year, but they are not mandatory. 

A study released in June showed that 61 percent of high schools in California do not offer computer science. Of the nearly 2 million high school students in the state, only 3 percent were enrolled in a computer science course in the 2016-17 school year, and in 2018 only 1 percent were enrolled in an Advanced Placement computer science course, which can count as college credit. Also, according to the report, minority students, including Latinos, have less access to those courses. 

“California has standards, but we have not dedicated any money and we haven’t made it a requirement for our high schools to offer computer science. We do see this as a matter of equity, because we think that there’s so much involved in computer science that, if we’re not offering it, it’s problematic,” she said.

Morris, who leads a “Computer Science for All” initiative at Mendez, also believes that in order for L.A. Unified to meet its mission of being “a progressive global leader in education,” it has to align support and resources for innovation to happen in the classroom. “If you’re going to put it in writing, back it up. Be prepared to do whatever it takes to achieve it.” 

At Mendez, Morris was the only computer science teacher in 2013 when the school began offering the course. The Computer Science for All initiative pathway at her school became official in 2017 and offers introductory computer science courses to all incoming ninth-graders. Students in 10th, 11th and 12th grades may choose to continue taking computer science courses.

Morris would like to see more computer science courses added at her school and districtwide as well, so she is contributing to that goal by developing coursework and professional development for other teachers. “We’d like to scale what we’re doing, share our work with other schools so they may replicate and do the same.”

LA School Report asked Morris about what could be done better or what needs to change in the education system to allow reforms and innovation to take place in the classroom, as well as her goals for the new school year. Her answers have been lightly edited for length and clarity.

What have you seen as the best benefit of this initiative for your students?

The why of it, the reason we would do this is, what we’re really looking at is a cultural shift, we want our learners to be problem solvers. And so we want to provide every student with the essential thinking and analytical skills to succeed in computational thinking practices that are involved and required in computer science courses, the skills that we think are necessary for our students to succeed in college and career and beyond. So really look at it as a matter of equity.

What are your students’ strengths, and what challenges do they face?

Well, some of the challenges that they face are similar to what we see in communities that are underrepresented and underserved. We have some levels of poverty that make it difficult to have the access, let’s say for instance, to the same amount of technology, the same amount of information at homes. We have the political landscape at this time where some of our community members may be undocumented. And that brings in a lot of tension, in terms of, “How can I come to school and be 100 percent present to the learning if I’ve got all of these other concerns at home? Maybe my mom isn’t home, maybe I’m here with an aunt and uncle because my parents aren’t here with me.” So the struggles that we have because of the high immigrant population, we might have struggles around poverty, so that we don’t have as much access. We might have some violence that is a little too close to home.

Those are the distractors from the work. They’re very real, and so they become part of our conversation in the classroom. Before we can get to any learning, we might be addressing all of those, or some of those in some regard. And then how our students deal with that, and some of their strengths are being able to come together as a community.

We have restorative justice practices. We sit and we discuss these concerns or their concerns. We have a very tight community of support. So I think students do come to school and engage in practices that feel relevant to them, not only in terms of academics but also in terms of their socio-emotional state. So it does become a place where we come to work out problems, whatever type of problems they may be. So their strength is they’re very resilient, very creative and working on and continuing to struggle. And in the struggle, finding a light and moving forward, going onto college and career, which is very exciting.

How easy or difficult was it for you to become a teacher?

The process at the time, approximately 20 years ago, was considerably easier than it is today, I think. It was a different time. The standardized test, the CST, and I believe No Child Left Behind, was something that was of the time. It was beginning to get to that point where qualifications and certification were the topics of the day. But at the time it wasn’t difficult, especially in Los Angeles. There was a strong need for teachers. I found my school very easily and fell right into a community and started teaching in Highland Park’s Aldama Elementary School. And that’s really where I learned how to be a teacher.

How do you remember your first day or your first year teaching?

The first day was so long ago, but what I do remember was the awesomeness of responsibility that the job felt like. It was after that first day, I knew how intense it could be and how dynamic it could be and how amazing, but also how exhausting it could be. So that’s what I remember from the first day. And from the first year, it was 2001, I taught third grade at Aldama, and Harry Potter was really popular at the time, as were standardized tests, so I remember I wanted to emphasize reading comprehension. I found these plastic black glasses that didn’t have a lens and I called them the reading comprehension glasses, and we gave a pair to every student and we would wear them during reading time so that we could have better comprehension. We took a picture of the whole class. So that was the beginning of me sort of taking on that role of quirky and fun, but trying to engage the student in the learning. It was adorable.

What has been your best moment or day as a teacher, or one of your proudest accomplishments so far?

I think I’m proudest regularly when current students and alumni return to the campus after school hours, coming to get support on whatever problems they’re working on, things that are going on with them. This includes them getting advice or coming for materials or tutoring. And it’s especially meaningful for me when former students come back, and they come back to the campus to support each other, to support the current students and teachers. They come back to help me a lot of times, to clean up the room, pack up. And so it happens often enough that it reinforces this belief that I have that schools are our community centers where we can all kind of find encouragement to solve problems and share resources and grow together. I think that it happens every semester multiple times, and that’s when I think I’m proudest.

What is the best way that either the school or the school district or even the state could do in better serving your students? 

I’m going to look at the state level and just suggest a tool that I found recently that’s really interesting. It’s this interactive map that compiles the data from the Conference Board and the National Center for Education. There are three criteria points. One is if there is any money dedicated to the state or funding for computer science professional development. The second criteria would be, is it a requirement that all high schools offer computer science. And the third criteria is, what kind of standards have been developed for K-12 computer science. There are 14 out of 50 states that have all three checks: Nevada, Idaho, Wyoming, Iowa, Arkansas, Indiana, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Hawaii.

California has only one of the three check marks and it’s the standards. California has standards, but we have not dedicated any money and we haven’t made it a requirement for our high schools to offer computer science. Because we do see this as a matter of equity, because we think that there’s so much involved in computer science that, if we’re not offering it, it’s problematic. We’re saying we want to develop our students into critical and analytical consumers and producers, not just consumers of technology, and be part of the innovation. California is among three that only has one of three check marks. That’s California, Alaska and Montana.

What do you think needs to happen, in the school or the district, for a teacher to be able to bring innovation to the classroom?

Ideally, I think we have to find the balance between the policies and the reality of the work. So want is a four-letter word. Once it is written or announced as a mission or a vision, follow through until you get there. Align everything to that mission or that vision. Money and thoughtful implementation. If you want to achieve a goal such as, and I’ll just quickly read a goal, “L.A. Unified will be a progressive global leader in education, providing a dynamic and inspiring learning experience, where all students graduate ready for success.” That is LAUSD’s mission. If you’re going to put it in writing, back it up. Be prepared to do whatever it takes to achieve it.

I think that we’re looking at some frameworks of product development like Scrum, where it’s really organic to the group and allowing every school at their school site to use their funding and fund them. Funding is essential. All schools have funding at the school site level. So let’s implement the computer science curriculum and technology, but let’s allow people to innovate by not being so risk-averse because innovation requires taking a chance and risking. Make it part of the culture that we want to take some risks in education and innovate, and be the progressive leader that we say we want to be.

And then the funding is, we have a strong computer science department at our school that we’ve funded and grown very organically. However, sustainability is going to be a problem for us at the district level. We need to think about how to implement and sustain computer science education. But at our school site level, now we need to think about how are we going to fund professional development for our teachers to collaborate and how do we continue to grow the curriculum. And how do we update our technology because as you know, innovation, it takes money.

What can the district do? We need credentialing and course selection. If we don’t have the course selection and we don’t have the credentials for the teachers to teach the courses, it’s not going to happen. So credentialing and course selection.

What do you think is the most misunderstood aspect about your job? What do you think is the biggest misperception people have about teachers?

I think perhaps the oversimplification of the work could lead to misunderstanding. Learning and teaching are really truly very dynamic, and that’s because it involves interacting with humans and growing with each other. I kind of equate it to parenting different children within the same family. We know that what works for one may not necessarily work for another child of ours. Now multiply that times 120. That might be the number of people that I see in the day that are all different. And then change that set of humans every year.

The complexity of the work that we do because we work with humans and we are trying to work at an individual level with every student. That brings up the next point. Students, they’re evolving and continuously shifting, and the way that they view themselves and they perceive themselves as learners is so nuanced. It involves not just content and pedagogy, but also socio-emotional considerations that also integrate group dynamics. I think the misconception may be that this job ends at 3:00 p.m., when in reality it’s this delicate balance of planning and organizing and probing and evaluating, creating, managing and, most importantly, interacting in real-time with other people.

What do you think is the best way parents can help teachers do their job? How can parents collaborate with teachers?

I think there are some ways that the parents can model some of the things that we’re doing in the classroom so that there is like an in-between what we do in the classroom and what they’re doing at home. Engage your son or daughter in active conversations about problems that they’re working on at school. What kinds of things are you seeing? “Tell me a problem that you’re having right now, not necessarily with another human being, but maybe a problem within the concept that you’re learning.” Also, encourage your child to find the value of productive struggle related to home life or school life. So when is it OK to struggle? And don’t give up on that. Keep trying. Value exploration and discovery. That’s huge because really what learning is about is asking that next question. Also, solve problems together at home. They don’t have to be related to school and let your child see you as a learner first. Oftentimes, students, children see their parent as, “Oh, they have it all together, they know exactly what they’re doing,” and they don’t see the struggle. They don’t see that it takes that resilience and that persistence to produce.

Encourage them to keep trying, especially if success is not attained right away, and value the process and the final product. Maybe avoid focusing solely on the grade, which is really something that we’re starting to notice, is the pressure that the student’s feeling, if they don’t bring home the grade, and there’s so much more there.

What do you think needs to change in the system or needs immediate attention, either in your district, your school or at the state level?

It’s going to be around the idea of accountability and self-evaluation. And it’s going to be for all the stakeholders: teachers, students, parents, community, administration, district, industry, state, higher education especially. But all of us. Mastery learning, changing the academic model will make the change, I think, that we need to see across the table, because the way we’re measuring someone’s learning and understanding of a concept is affecting the way they’re seeing themselves as learners, which is affecting what they’re doing for the rest of their lives. And it’s imperative that we change it as quickly as possible. Implement it and live up to it. All of us. That accountability piece is each one of us taking our part and evaluating. Self-evaluation is critical.

What’s your main goal for the next school year?

We have a computer science department that we have grown. We grew from, I was the only person that taught computer science in 2013, to now there are six of us teaching computer science on our campus. We’re all math teachers and we balance math and computer science. I would like to add some additional courses, not just to our school, I mean additional courses to the district. I’m writing up coursework, professional development for ourselves. We’d like to scale what we’re doing, share our work with other schools so they may replicate and do the same. Right now, we’re in the middle of some research so that we can show how effective it is to have our students taking computer science and then how that might impact their math performance and understanding. We want to continue developing computer science after-school programs as well.

KIPP LA Prep’s fifth-grade science teacher Nicole Tavera and three of her students. (Photo: Nicole Tavera/KIPP)

This interview is one in a series spotlighting Los Angeles teachers, their unique and innovative classroom approaches, and their thoughts on how the education system can better support teachers in guiding students to success. See the full series. 

Nicole Tavera grew up knowing that education was a priority in her family, but she struggled in school, especially with testing.

Tavera, now a fifth-grade science teacher at KIPP LA Prep in Boyle Heights, said she always had to work really hard in school. But it paid off.

“I am the first generation to graduate from college (in my family), and I am proud to say not the last. I have younger siblings as well who are on that road,” Tavera said. “Education has just been very, very highly important in our family, and so that’s why I chose to become a teacher.”

She was determined to become a teacher in order to help students learn in a fun way and not to measure their learning only on their test scores. “I don’t agree with that because I was never a good test taker,” said Tavera, who grew up in Boyle Heights but moved to Baldwin Park because her parents thought it was safer. She attended school there from fourth grade through high school.

“I remember I struggled a lot in reading, and I think that was something that made me have to work extra hard. I was never a high-performing student, and I hated tests. So I feel their stress because I used to be stressed with these tests.”

Tavera believes there’s “a lot of California state testing” put on students and also nationwide, which makes it stressful for them and for their teachers.

One way she helps her students ease their stress is by pulling them aside and telling them, “OK, let’s talk about this question,” when she knows that they know the answer but accidentally chose the wrong one. She reminds them, “This is just your chance to show them all that you’ve learned. And I did my very best to try and teach you all that you need to know. Do not stress about these tests. Just show them how much your brain has grown.”

California uses the California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress (CAASPP) system, in alignment with the Common Core State Standards, to measure grade-level learning in English language arts and math for students in third through eighth grades and 11th grade. In March, California began its first year of the California Science Tests (CAST) for students in fifth, eighth, 10th and 12th grades, as mandated by the federal Every Student Succeeds Act. The state testing timeline runs from January through May. There is an interim testing period throughout the year, about every six to eight weeks to measure students’ progress toward meeting standards before they take the CAASPP tests. Overall, California has 10 types of assessments, but students don’t necessarily take all of them or at the same time. Some of these tests are for English learners and some are alternate tests for students who have individualized education plans.

The 2018 CAASPP scores, the most recent available, showed that just half of California students scored proficient in reading and 39 percent did so in math.

Tavera says many of her students come to her class reading at two to three years below grade-level, so before she can teach science she has to help them read at grade level, as all teachers at her school do. No matter what subject they teach, every teacher reads with their students 30 minutes every morning, which helps students get “dramatic gains across all subjects,” she said.

“We read, we read, we read,” she said. “Reading is so important because not only does it help our (English language arts) teacher, but it also helps me in science.”

Tavera started out at KIPP teaching English language arts to first-graders in 2016. But when she began teaching science at LA Prep, she says it was “eye-opening” for her as she realized that was her calling. Teaching science became her real passion.

She believes science teaches students to think critically, show curiosity, explore their world and discover new things. Her goal is to make that learning process fun. “I want school to be fun.”

She knows science is not an easy subject to teach, particularly among students in a low-income neighborhood with fewer opportunities to learn about science outside of school. But she thinks science is a very important subject because “it’s focused on life. It’s focused on math. It’s focused on reading and ELA, so it just gives them (students) the all-around core subjects.”

“When I’m using labs and simulations and seeing students so excited about science and honestly telling me, ‘I’ve never done so much science before,’ it’s just like, ‘OK, this is where I’m meant to be,” Tavera said. Her goal is to continue providing more hands-on activities for her students: “Just finding ways to make science fun … finding ways to have my students just enjoy my classroom.”

“Science and teaching have just been a passion of mine, and I think at the end of all of this, I hope to be a teacher where my students say, ‘Miss Tavera is someone I’ll never forget.”

LA School Report asked Tavera about what could be done better or what needs to change in the education system to allow reforms and innovation to take place in the classroom, as well as what keeps her motivated to teach. Her answers have been lightly edited for length and clarity.

What do you currently do in the classroom that is special or unique in teaching science that helps your students be engaged? 

Teaching science has become a passion to me. I think not only because I’m helping students become more aware of their surroundings and how life works, but also it’s really important for me to show them how to think, how to show curiosity, how to explore their world around them and discover new things. A lot of them don’t realize how our life actually works in terms of how a plant grows or chemical reactions and how things change and how we grow. So they’re starting to realize there’s a lot that they don’t know about how life works around them. So using hands-on investigations, even teaching my students how to argue like a scientist. 

In preparing and supporting teachers for success, what do you think is the best thing that your school organization, the district or the state could do differently to better support teachers? 

At the school I work for, I can talk about how much support the teachers have in terms of leadership. Our leaders and our managers put teachers number one. They want to hear us out. There is a document that they provide us and they push us to write down what it is that we need and they will try their very best to get whatever it is that we need. They’re willing to work with us no matter what. When we say we need certain supplies, they will help us figure out a way for us to get supplies if it’s difficult to get it. And they realize, I feel like our leadership realizes that our teachers need to be happy in order for our students to be happy. We have amazing leadership. We’re just one team and one family.

What’s the biggest thing you think needs immediate attention or needs to change in the education system? 

I honestly feel our students work so hard and we want to support them in any way. I do feel that there is a lot of testing going on like California state testing. It’s a lot of stress on students and also teachers when it comes to state testing at the end of the year. 

So just trying to get them to not be so stressed because testing basically signifies how much they really know and I don’t agree with that because I was never a good test taker. As I said before, I was never a high-performing student and I hated tests. So I feel their stress because I used to be stressed with these tests and in my mind, it’s like I know the answer and I know the subject, but when it comes to taking a test, I stress out. I overthink things and I end up choosing the wrong answer. So I feel like testing does not signify who my students are.

And so I think that’s something that as a state and nationwide, we can work on not putting so much testing on our students.

How easy or difficult was the process for you to become a teacher?

Honestly, I want to say it was a little difficult for me. I’ve never been a high-performing student. I’ve always had to work really, really hard, and I always laugh and tell my sisters, “You don’t have to study as much as I had to study. I had to study so hard just to be able to get that A that I wanted.” I have sisters that just review their notes and then get that A.

So for me, education has been a little bit of a struggle, and I remember I struggled a lot in reading and I think that was something that made me have to work extra hard. But I think elementary was a tough one. It was in high school when started realizing, “OK, this is it. This is my time to shine because I know I need to go to college. There’s no if or buts. My dad and my mom really pushed me and wanted me to be the first one. As the oldest child, I felt like there was a high standard for me. It’s like, “I need to do this not just for myself, but for my parents who didn’t get that opportunity to go to college or even finish high school.” So I was successful and I got accepted to Cal State Long Beach. I concentrated on liberal studies and graduated in 2011. And then I continued on to complete my credentials after that. 

When did you know that you wanted to be a teacher?

It was actually my fourth- and fifth-grade teacher, and I think that was around the time where the transition was made from me leaving Boyle Heights and then going to Baldwin Park. Miss Fischer was my fourth-grade teacher. And I think that was a time when I realized, “I think I want to be a teacher, I want to be able to help students.”

What memory stands out for you most from your first day of teaching or your first year?  

It was so hard. I remember the first weeks I cried because teaching and being in charge of these little humans, you have so much responsibility and getting them engaged is very, very difficult, and when I was explaining that to my family, they didn’t really understand. It’s not easy. Finding curriculum, finding ways to get them engaged in learning and making it rigorous enough for them, it was very difficult and this is not an easy job. I think I’m finally finding my groove in teaching.

I want to say KIPP has made me the teacher I am and has pushed me. I’ve learned so much these last four years at KIPP. And every year I feel, “OK, this is my best year.” And then I go on the next year, I say, “Wait, this year was even better.” But it was very difficult in the first couple of years.

What are parents doing to help you do your job, or what do you wish they would do to better support you? 

I think having communication with our parents is the most important thing. I think our teachers realize how much we care for their children and having that communication — we all have cell phones so they can call us at any time, any day. And if they have a question about homework, they will call us and we are there to help them out. Parents also are aware that teachers volunteer themselves to do tutoring after school. So I think they appreciate all the time that we offer our students, they appreciate our hard work and they show their generosity by working together as a team to be able to help their child. Communication is the key. 

Can you share about your students and the community at KIPP LA Prep?

We are about 98 percent Latinx at KIPP LA Prep. I believe we have about 95 percent that are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch. I’m very proud to say that the year I joined KIPP LA Prep, it became a Blue Ribbon school, in 2016. We are known as one of the highest-performing middle schools at LAUSD. That’s something I’m really proud about.

We all agree at our school that reading is so important because not only does it help our (English language arts) teacher, but it also helps me in science. I have fifth-grade reading books that are at fifth-grade reading level, and if my students are not at fifth-grade reading, they’re not going to understand what they’re reading about in my science class.

Every teacher, whether you’re a math teacher, a history teacher or a science teacher, we all are accountable for our homeroom to push them to read. So I have stars that represent our sky and every time they pass a book or a quiz, they bring that star higher and higher in our universe. That’s my way of pushing reading. I think because we all push reading, we all see dramatic gains in our students. 

Is there anything that you wish people better understood about charter schools or in particular about the school where you teach? 

That’s always a tough subject. To me, education has always been important in my life, growing up and still to this day, that’s why I chose to be a teacher. In my mind, it’s about making a difference, supporting all students no matter what, no matter what school they choose to go to, it’s just giving students the opportunities to become successful, that’s the one most important thing. I think all teachers are teaching for a reason, and that is for our students. And if we can provide an opportunity to help them become successful and get them ready for high school and college, that’s what we’re all here for. 

How do you help your students cope with social or academic challenges?

There are times when my students will come in sad or stressed at things that may have happened at home. And what I do love about our school is that whatever may be happening outside of school, they feel safe at our school. There have been times where there are helicopters and students are telling us, “There may be some type of dangerous activity outside,” and they’re aware of that when there is a helicopter flying outside and we have to stay inside. And what’s sad to me is that they’re kind of used to it. But what I love about our school is that we inform them that no matter what, they’re always safe in our classrooms. So I think that whatever may be happening outside where they may be stressed or a situation may happen, they come in with a smile on their faces. 

I even have kids who call me saying they’re so sick, but they still want to come to school. And sometimes I have to reassure them, “It’s OK. Stay home. You get better, and when you get back we’ll get back into wherever it is we left on.” 

What’s been your best moment or day as a teacher? Your proudest accomplishment? 

It was when I first started teaching science. As soon as I started teaching fifth-grade science at Prep, it was an eye-opener, finding out my calling that science is for me. I was just excited and knew this is where I want to be now.

What is your main goal or wish for the next school year? 

I think my main goal is just providing more labs and hands-on activities for my students. I see that that’s working for them and they’re learning so much with hands-on activities. I am finding ways to make science fun and providing fun activities for my students, like looking up different curriculums. I use YouTube and interaction websites and find ways to have my students just enjoy my classroom. 

I have students who come into my class and just love my class so much that they want to be scientists. I’ve had students who dress as some type of scientist for Halloween, which makes my heart shine so much and I know I’m making a difference. So I hope I am making a difference for my students and help them become successful. Teaching is a very tough job. But we do it because we love it and we do it because we care for our future, and our students are our future.