Student Teacher Señora Leon's Experience Managing Mr. Montero's Classes

Since the start of the school year, Sra. Leon has been working as a student teacher with beloved multi-level Spanish teacher Mr. Montero in order to garner the experience and qualifications necessary to become a teacher herself. Having had Mr. Montero as her teacher when she was a student at CCHS, Sra. Leon was happy to find herself back in his classroom, but this time learning from him as a teacher rather than a student. However, when Mr. Montero suffered an injury in October, Sra. Leon found herself overseeing all his classes alone for well over a month. 

Although not working directly with Mr. Montero in the classroom anymore, Sra. Leon had practically no trouble transitioning to working alone. Not only had she spent extensive time working as a long term substitute teacher beforehand, but “because [she is] his student teacher, and he is helping [her] become a teacher and training [her] in the process, he [had already given her] a lot of control over the class”. However, Sra. Leon did remark that “the more difficult part was taking over the AP literature class because the curriculum for that is a little bit more detailed”, prompting her and Mr. Montero to meet over the phone occasionally to discuss it. All in all, though, Sra. Leon hopes to continue the school year as normal and keep providing the support that sparked her desire to become a teacher.

“When I was in school I felt like I was not getting the support I needed, so I studied psychology and found that there was a gap between the support that we give our students and the support they actually need”, says Sra. Leon. After pursuing psychology further and spending some time working as a school psychologist, she decided that she was not providing the amount of social and emotional support she was hoping for. So, she began to explore teaching, a profession she found she really enjoyed. As a teacher, she can “work with a larger population of students”, accomplishing the original goal she set out to achieve—to give as much support to as many students as possible. Fortunately, Mr. Montero was able to return to CCHS after Thanksgiving Break, and his classes are getting back to normal, but his students were lucky to have a friendly face as their long term sub.