Climbing Up the Ladder of Teaching

By Alondra R.

Many students find history boring or useless to learn as they believe what happens in the past stays in the past and nothing will change.

For Andrew Nguyen, a teacher at Yerba Buena High School, he looks at history as a fascinating subject. He believes that history is about learning the different perspectives out there and there are always two sides to every story. 

Mr. Nguyen is experiencing his first year teaching focusing on seniors who are preparing themselves for their future as adults. Excited for the start of his career as a history teacher, he starts making special memories with his peers and students, such as talking about each other's life and making fun of the experiences, having laughs together, and giving his students advice, giving him yet another reason for why he chose to become a teacher, to make a change.

Mr.Nguyen: “I feel like I can make a difference in the world, not like a big one but I feel like I can make one small difference to change the world so I just… different high school there were rough times like most people here and I feel like my teachers were like who I looked up to, they were always my role models, there was always someone who I could go to every day”

Being a teacher in the high school community is hard. Mr.Nguyen mentions as the years pass he will develop lots more of class management skills but meanwhile he is just simply letting his seniors face the consequences of their own actions, like whether they want to show up to class or ditch it, doing their classwork or staring at their devices, which will lead them to be lost in class and fall behind, as he was a high school student himself. 

Mr.Nguyen: “It was a really good time, some really bad times, made a lot of friends, had really good relationship with my teachers, I felt like I took school too seriously more than I needed to, I felt like there’s a lot more in life than school but education is very important as well”

Education is a large priority for Mr.Nguyen, he is trying to figure out his students on how far they can go without pushing so hard by trying to give enough work that they can be able to finish in class without the need to have homework. He knows his students either work, are in sports, or are in any other extracurricular activity when not in class, knowing life is busy when not in school. Although being his first year at YB is causing him difficulty to find time for himself.

Mr.Nguyen: “I like to make a joke that I live here, I’m here to 5 everyday, I’m here 45 minutes before my first class starts, I’m here 40 minutes to an hour after I’m done teaching. So it’s just I don’t really have time for myself when I go home, I’m always grading or lesson planning, I wish I had more time with myself”

Mr.Nguyen remembers when before teaching he had many hobbies of his own, reminding us that teachers are also like their students, out of school wanting to hang out with their friends and have fun. He mentions he enjoys playing sports and simply just watching some TV in his living room.

Mr.Nguyen: “I had a lot of hobbies back in the day, I usually like to play basketball, basketball usually is my first option, and on rainy days it would just be like watching movies, listening to music, DJing… I like to skate, I used skate a lot, oh I like to go out to eat, I’m a yokini, so I like to try new food places.”

Although being a teacher has its struggles, he still loves teaching and sees his future in a class with students even it’s not a Yerba Buena classroom.

Mr.Nguyen: “I definitely see myself teaching until I retire or at least in the education field until I retire, but unless somehow I became really good at basketball and made it into NBA then I’ll probably take that route”

Most importantly Mr.Ngyuen hopes his students leave his classroom with a positive mindset as they are now leaving high school to go to college or wherever their life decides to take them.

Mr.Nguyen: “I want them to leave to become a better person, to become activists of the future, to be able to make a change in the world, I want them to be like future leaders but basically at the end of the day when they graduate I want them to become good human beings, become better than they were when they were first freshmens”