Dear Familia,
So I started substitute teaching in January and so far it's been...interesting. I've taught every grade from k-12 and done Math, English, Science, Art, and even sports (hilarious). Some days are amazing and some days seriously test my patience. For example, today I had to call security twice at the shall-remain-nameless high school where I was covering a Math class. Once the kids were literally lighting things on fire and once one of the kids refused to give me his name when I was writing him up. I actually didn't call security the second time, but they showed up and I let them deal with his attitude. Outrageous. I've only been to Mountain View once and haven't been to Kino at all which makes me super sad. Skyline High has been my favorite school so far and I even have a favorite class of kids. They make me want to ditch the masters track and sign up to get my teaching certificate (Amundsen's 4th hour, you are superb).
It's a pretty amazing feeling to teach someone how to do something and even more amazing just to get to connect with students on a day-to-day basis. Only having classes for a day is really hard even on days like today. I want to be able to stay with those kids and help them realize that they should be taking full advantage of a FREE education. Even if Arizona is behind in the US education game, Mesa has one of the best districts in the state and we are light years ahead of countries like Guatemala. I had some incredible teachers over the years that truly inspire and motivate me to this day and it is pretty special to even be a tiny bit connected to this profession!
Paz,
Jem
