SAN ANTONIO — A new school year means new teachers in the classrooms.
Nick Garcia leads the local chapter of Teach For America, an educational nonprofit whose goal is to recruit and train qualified and diverse community leaders to become teachers. Many of them are people of color who go on to teach in low-income areas.
This year, Teach For America trained 350 teachers who will instruct throughout Texas. About 70 of them will be coming to San Antonio, where their impact is expected to ripple beyond mere math and reading skills.
“COVID-19 has deepened the inequities we see in our communities here in San Antonio,” Garcia said.
This fall will be Neha Thippanas’s first year teaching, and for many of the seventh-grade math students she’ll have in her classroom, it’ll be their first time back in school at full capacity.
“I’m excited to be back,” Thippana said. “I think transitioning from virtual learning and virtual schools to a fully in-person school like we expect to happen starting August will be a challenge.”
Thippana says her biggest concern will be catching students up from what was a most unusual year of hybrid learning.
“I want to figure out where our students are needing more help in,” Thippana said.
Ryley Constable will teach the same subject at a different grade level and shares the same concerns.
“As a recent college graduate, I remember what it’s like to learn over Zoom,” Constable said.
He says the updated training models they’ve learned have prepared the new teachers for the post pandemic teaching era.
“This pandemic has given schools a lot of time to re-imagine what education can look like after the pandemic, and I'm excited to work with SAISD to do that,” Constable said.