Mini-Bio
Many, many moons ago, I was born in Bogota, Colombia. From that point forward, I seem to have been moving constantly. I have lived in Texas, Florida, Idaho, Arizona, Southern California, and Northern California. I went to three different fourth grades, two different sixth, and moved states in between middle and high school.
The scenery may have changed, but education was always the constant that allowed me to feel grounded. This is what I hope to provide for my students- a positive, constructive learning environment. I love to travel, movies by Wes Anderson and the Coen Brothers, short declarative sentences, and music. The 2018-2019 school year will be my fifteenth in education and my fourteenth at C.K. McClatchy High School. I love the diverse socio-economic composition of the campus and the fact that I can ride my bicycle or walk to school.
Teaching Philosophy
I apply a humanistic approach to education. Every year, every day, and every period I attempt to present these three following attitudes or qualities to the classroom:
- Realness: The ability to be genuine with your students, therefore being real with oneself. This leads to communication without a false front.
- Trust: The ability to accept and prize your students for their various abilities, opinions, and imperfections. To trust that they will work their hardest if given an affective learning environment.
- Empathic understanding: The ability to understand the student’s reactions to the process of education and how learning seems to the student. People appreciate when they are simply understood – not evaluated, not judged, simply understood from their own point of view, not the teacher’s.
I stumbled across all of the above while reading “Freedom to Learn” by Carl Rogers for my Educational Psychology course. Thank you Dr. Lilly at CSUS.