Why Become a High School Teacher?

Video Transcript

"My name is Diana Gutierrez and I'm a High School teacher in San Jose. Why I became a High School teacher? Ever since I was a little girl, I always wrote in this little journal what I wanted to be, and I wrote Movie Star, and Teacher, and my mom laughed at me because she was like you can never be both of those. But it didn't change throughout my elementary years, and I thought I would be teaching elementary, because I thought I was better with smaller kids and I went to college and decided to do acting. But while I was going to acting classes I was also doing a part time job at an elementary school. Basically student teaching for free and I found out that I really loved that and I incorporated a lot of my acting into the fourth grade classroom and the curriculum and I did a school tour for children around Chicago about an immigrant family, and and immigrant girl, Latina, teaching a Caucasian boy from the farms how to read. Which was quite an interesting twist on illiteracy and that got me thinking about teaching full time. I applied to teach for America, hesitantly, and got in and fate kind of took me to California and I was assigned High School and I was terrified, because I was twenty-two years old and I looked like I was in High School and how would they respect somebody that looked their age. On the first day one of the boys came in and he said, " Where's the teacher?" and they started banging on the desks and I banged right back and I said "I am your teacher. Sit down." and the whole class was quiet and for that moment I was, I was just stunned and I knew that this was the beginning of a crazy, passionate path. My name is Diana Gutierrez and I'm a High School teacher in San Jose."