I did not want to be a teacher. I repeat. I did not want to be a teacher. My mom tried to be an elementary teacher and I remember staying up with her during school nights to grade her students math papers in high school. I did not want to be that stressed.

I wanted to be a food scientist at the beginning of my senior year in college. I was looking at intern/entry level jobs. I had taken a molecular gastronomy class. I thought my career was going to be about food in some form. That was until the middle of senior year.

At my college, shout out to all my Saint Mary’s Gaels, we have a semester called Jan Term. For those of you who are not familiar, Jan Term is a month where you get to explore one class that can be outside of your major. It really helps broaden your horizons. I didn’t travel at all during my college years because STEM is a hard major to travel and take courses anywhere else. So, here I was, trying to find some way to go abroad.

I signed up for a course that would put me into a center that housed/taught/transformed what is termed “children at risk” for a whole month in the Philippines. At this specific center, it was a group of boys that had a wide age-range. They came from different parts of the island with so many different stories, backgrounds and reasons why they were at this center. I was teaching basic chemistry and math lessons all while living and getting to know these boys. After that month, I went back to California to finish up my senior year.

I remember sitting in a class and staring out the window saying, “I don’t want to be here. I want to be with those boys going through work.” However, I didn’t know if I was going to do that. I had already set up an summer internship with a flavor company that would hopefully turn into a full-time position.

Then, someone reached out to me on LinkedIn about an Americorps math tutoring program called Blueprint Math Fellows. I remember getting this email during a lab, waiting for something in my hood. My curiosity told me to check it out, send in a resume, set up a call. I thought that if I really wanted to teach then this would tell me. It was a year commitment that took place in the Bay Area.

So, I graduated from college with a B.S. in Chemistry and I went to San Diego to work in the flavor company. It wasn’t my favorite experience, but that’s another story. They didn’t have any full time offerings by the time I was supposed to travel back north to take the Blueprint Position, but they offered to extend my intern contract. I left and traveled up north.

I started with Blueprint fall of 2017 and it was the best year of my life. Basically, I worked at a school in Oakland Unified School District and fell in love with my kids and their growth in math content. Our job was literally to help get students to appreciate different ways to learn/understand math. Along with that though, we were going to staff meetings, school events, watching kids at games, and my coworkers were honestly the best. My experience here is probably another story.

At the end of the year, I had an inkling that I wanted to be in education but did not know if teaching was really it. I thought maybe behind the scenes in education or supplemental nonprofit programs was going to be where I was heading. I wanted to be part of the fight to close education gaps and provide equity to all students. While trying to figure out the best route, I decided to spend another year with Blueprint as a Lead Fellow.

I was assigned to a new school and all was going well until the math teacher quit a few months in. A day or so after that teacher left, the principal pulled me aside and asked if I would be interested mainly because I knew the math content and I was in the community. I still had to go up against other interviewers but I decided just to try.

So, after a month of the long process, I became a 7th grade math teacher officially. Fast forward, I have finished up my “second year” of teaching (it was honestly my first full year) and now I am reflecting on all of the experiences that I had during this time. Trust me, there is a lot to it.

The biggest advice or lesson I could give for people who are interested in education but don’t know if they want to be a teacher, just try it. Maybe not a full on teacher position, but volunteer at a school, find a nonprofit program that supports kids, find something you are passionate about to teach kids. I would not have come to the realization that I really had a passion for teaching if I didn’t take that leap during Jan Term.

I am sorry if this first post was long but not very detailed. Honestly, I think a lot of my journey needs its own post so you will have to wait and read those. Thanks to anyone who stuck around until the end.

Love, Miss Raegina

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