Terry Amaya

Terry Amaya is a history teacher at Giano Intermediate School. When this story was told she was a seventh grade math and science teacher at Giano.

It’s been nice to have had a chance to talk with teachers from other schools at the district-wide meetings arranged by Ball. I taught in elementary before this year, and the only teachers we ever communicated with during workshop trainings were from elementary. So it was really interesting to hear the perspective of high school and middle school teachers, and what problems they were dealing with. A lot of their issues were similar to what we were dealing with at an elementary level, like motivating students.

We tried to come up with ideas of how to motivate students, but first we discussed why this lack of motivation exists. What is it that happens to the students? Why do they lose their motivation to learn? What kinds of experiences can we create for them to become motivated? One of the high school teachers felt that some programs were made too available for the kids. For example, the Mt. Sac Community College program that helps Nogales High School students catch up with classes. They’re allowed to take night classes when they fail a subject at school. So we thought, “The students know they can make up the class so they relax about doing well at the high school, and then later try to make it up during the summer or in the evening.” I thought that there are probably many students who actually need to re-take those classes, but I could also see how some would rely on that opportunity. The next time the teachers get together, I would love to hear about some strategies for motivating kids that other teachers have tried that I can take back to my class right away and use.

It’s been interesting and beneficial working with different people. You don’t realize that there are so many other people with so many ideas. And that’s what I’ve enjoyed – talking to others and seeing the excitement in their eyes about what they want and plan on doing. It motivates me to say, “Okay, I’m going to try this.”

Word cloud created at wordle.net.