Questions With MS. alvarez
By: Brianna Sandstrom
Do you feel that SBHS was very welcoming?:
“Extremely. I tell everyone that I love where I work because I have never felt unsupported or thrown to the curb. A lot of new teachers feel that way but I personally feel the opposite. I feel that I have been working here way longer than just a month and a half because of that main reason.” Ms. Alvarez has felt that working at SBHS was a very important and great decision she has made. She has not felt as if she was unwelcome or unwanted but has been able to be greeted with open arms by most of the staff here. She feels very grateful to say these statements because many new teachers she has spoken with feel that starting off was a very rough and bumpy experience since they couldn’t fit into the work environment.
Do you have a new perspective on teaching after working at your first job right out of graduate school?:
“My perspective isn’t a new one but more heightened or highlighted because all of my dreams are coming true since I’m teaching kids who I want to help. I’m not just helping them with their academic skills but also their personal skills. Since I’m teaching a public speaking class, I feel that I’m helping kids to better communicate with their peers or outside of school like with their families or at their jobs.” Since Ms. Alvarez has had just a great opportunity to teach such amazing skills to her students, she feels that she’s not just teaching them but also helping them to grow. She feels that she’s impacting them not just inside the classroom but also outside. Ms. Alvarez has found her class to be extremely fun to teach which has changed her perspective of teaching not in a negative way but in a way that makes her happy and pushes her to come to work every day.
Is there anything you want to do that would be beneficial towards the school?:
Ms. Alvarez discusses her dream to start her own book club at SBHS. “I would love to start a book club, which in my opinion could be really fun, where it would be based on different novels of young adult literature. I feel that it’s such a great genre to write about or just learn more about. I think it would be great to be surrounded by kids who love to read them also and have the same thoughts as I do.” She discusses and highlights how wonderful it would be to engage the students that love to read books of the same genre and to meet and discuss their thoughts and opinions on the novel. She feels that surrounding kids with others who love to converse on the same things they all enjoy, it would help to unite them and have many beneficial aspects towards herself and the members.
When it comes to your students what would you say is the most difficult?:
“It would have to be trying to unglue my students from their phone. It would have to be reconnecting them to society.” Ms. Alvarez has had a rough time trying to engage her students more into the class and trying to get them to communicate more with their peers, to help engage them more with their surroundings instead of having them constantly on their phones and not paying attention. She feels that with the phones out of the way it would make things much more easier for both her and her students.