Carla Lopez, Ulirang Guro

I am Carla Lopez teaching Biology and Chemistry at Barstow High School of Barstow Unified School District here in California. I have been teaching under the same district for 2 years. After teaching here in the U.S. I have gained significant experience and cultural awareness of how students are in terms of their academics and had mold them to have goals in life and not to be satisfied with a high school diploma. As much as I learned a lot about their culture, I was able to share my culture, of being a Filipino teacher, a student and a friend. They got inspired with how Filipino students work as a student like them and gave them ideas to push themselves towards graduating and eventually getting a college degree for their future. I have shared with them not only the content of the subject I teach but also the values I learned back home and made them better individuals. As the saying goes, my goal for these students I am teaching right now is to contagiously infect them with the best education they can have and the good values they can remember for the rest of their lives.

I lead my students by showing a good example in terms of work ethics, discipline and being goal and results oriented. Not all the time that I lead but also learn from my students, I am open to their suggestions and give them the chance to be on the spotlight and instill in them that they can succeed. I use all necessary resources to learn in order for me to share it with my students and my learning never stops there. I also was able to learn my students learning styles and adjust my teaching style to theirs. Lastly, being an educator, I describe myself as a collaborator who actively seek ideas from other teachers around me and feed on wisdom from veteran teachers so I would be able to go to school feeling inspired everyday. CARLA LOPEZ, Barstow, California