New Newport-Mesa teachers looking to make their marks
They made sure to study hard before the first day of school this week. They also worried a little about getting lost on campus and remembering names of their peers.
They’re the new kids in school or, rather, the new teachers to the Newport-Mesa Unified School District.
While the district welcomed back around 22,000 students this week after summer break, it also filled 120 teacher vacancies.
“I told the students that we’re all in the same boat,” said Megan Kravets, a language arts teacher for special education students in grades 7-10 at Corona del Mar Middle and High School. “I don’t know anyone, or where everything is, but it’s something that you figure out as you go.”
This year will be the first for Kravets’ teaching career.
After student teaching at Eastbluff Elementary School in Newport Beach while completing her credentialing program and teaching summer school at Kaiser Elementary School in Costa Mesa, she locked in her position at Corona del Mar.
Her classroom is tidy, with different colored pens separated in old-fashioned milk bottles and stacks of “Lord of the Flies” with clean white book covers.
Back when the educator was a student, Kravets said her preparation for the first day of school involved talking to friends to see what classes they all had together and getting school supplies ready.
“The only thing I would really organize was my binder and that was before it even had anything in it,” Kravets said. “I’d just arrange the dividers in it. But that organization is something I still need for school.”
Now that the student has become the teacher, instead of organizing course schedules with classmates and sections of a binder, Kravets has been organizing lesson plans for each school day and studying the different needs and learning styles of each of her students.
She’s hung up motivational posters around her classroom, including one at the front of the class that reads: “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work” — Thomas Edison.
Armando Aguilar, a new teacher at Rea Elementary School in Costa Mesa, also adorned his front classroom wall with a poster. Its message — “I’m not here to be average. I’m here to be awesome.” — is one he hopes his new second-graders at Rea will believe in.
That’s why he’s decorated his classroom with faces of superheroes, like Thor and Wonder Woman, hanging from the ceiling and taped 21 masks each with the names of all his students to the front door.
“I wanted it to look like a party because we should celebrate learning,” said Aguilar, who came from the Santa Ana Unified School District, where he taught two years of third grade and one year of fourth.
This year, at Rea, will be his fourth year of teaching.
For Aguilar and the rest of Newport-Mesa’s teachers, the first day of school began last week. Rea’s teachers returned having completed some summer homework.
Aguilar said he and the instructors read various articles, including one about the different skills an entrepreneur needs.
On their first day back at school, the educators did a team-building activity where they had to split into groups and present a list of those skills, but they needed to present it in a fun and unique way, Aguilar said.
“I told them I liked to rap and another person in the group said she rapped too,” the second-grade teacher said. “That’s what we ended up doing together.”
He then made a new friend on that first day of school last week.
“We got to remember, we’re here to have fun,” Aguilar said of his new peers at Rea.
He added: “I was one of the shyest kids but school was a second home. I always looked forward to the first day of school.”
Twitter: @AlexandraChan10
