Interview with Ms. Vicente, by Tasneem K. and Nia S.

Ms. Vicente side-eyeing her 7th period (a screenshot from National Boards footage).

Q: What did you major in and what university did you go to?

“My bachelor’s is in English Language and Literature and my master’s is in Education. I went to the University of Maryland for both.”

Q: What motivated you to teach?

“A lot of things. My grandparents didn’t get to go to school past elementary school, so when they came to America, they were functionally illiterate. Because of this, education is very important to my family and my grandparents. When I was in school, my teachers were kind, and I wanted to be that kind of person for a kid.”

Q: How many years have you been teaching?

“This is my 6th year; I did my student teaching at Farquhar Middle School and taught for 2 years at Wood Middle School.”

Q: What made you choose Julius West?

“I wasn’t happy at my previous school, and when I interviewed at JW, everyone was very welcoming. Even though I didn't apply for it, I was offered a leadership position here. I could tell people saw my potential. I was also drawn to the No Place for Hate program, which is very important to me.”

Q: What was your best JW memory so far?

“At the end of each school year, I take polaroid pictures of my students and hang it up on your desk so students could come back and look for their pictures. I started this tradition in my first year at JW.”

Q: What do you think the school needs to improve on as a community?

“One thing that's tough and that the school is working on is attendance, and JW isn’t the only school that's having it as a problem. It is a national issue, and if kids aren't coming to school regularly, it's hard for them to learn.”

Q: What is the best and worst part about your students?

“The best part is they’re pretty funny, even when I don't want to admit it, and I like that this generation is pretty open minded and accepting. The ‘worst’ part is probably attention span and over reliance on technology. There are some kids who give up very easily on problems cause they rely too much on technology, and I'm worried about their brains.”

Q: Who started the war between the newspaper club and JW Mac?

“JWMAC did, obviously. They are fully responsible, and I have never engaged in shenanigans or tomfoolery of any kind.”

Q: How did you cause a bomb scare? 

“It was my first year teaching, and we had a new curriculum called StudySync. At the end of the year, my content specialist (English department chair) asked me to distribute the StudySync workbooks to students. Now what you need to know about me is that I'm very good at following directions. I said to her, ‘The kids are going to want to throw them out, so what should I tell them?’ 

She said, “They can throw them out, just not at school.” 

So in my mind, I have two rules; hand out the workbooks, and don't let the kids throw them out at school. So the next day, in my second period, I passed out the workbooks, and one of my students, who we’ll call ‘Ethan’ asked his classmates if he could have their workbooks. Curious, I said, ‘Why do you want their workbooks?” 

And he replied, “I’m going to burn them in my bonfire.”

Recall the two rules from earlier: hand out the workbooks, and don't let the kids throw them out at school. 

So I said, “Okay!”

Later that day, I saw him walking around with a cardboard box that he got from the librarian, which he had filled with the workbooks. Fast forward to that afternoon, afterschool clubs were taking place, and one of our administrators came on the announcements to say that we were evacuating. Now I knew this wasn’t a drill, cause they don't schedule drills for after school. 

So I got outside, and I asked one of the administrators what was happening. Here's the thing about administrators: they don't always tell you what's happening. Who you want to ask is the secretary because they always know what's happening. I found our secretary, and asked why we evacuated, and she said, “Someone left an unmarked box in front of the school and they had called the bomb squad.”

 I said, “Interesting.”

 My principal ended up sending a community letter explaining what had happened and that the box was full of instructional material. To my principal's credit, she never said anything to me about it as she thought it was another teacher at first. The next day, when Ethan came into class, we locked eyes and started laughing. His classmates asked what was going on, and we both said, “Nothing,” and then he said, “Well at least I can cross that off my bucket list!”

Q: And most importantly; Is cereal a soup?

(Definition: a liquid dish made by boiling meat, fish, vegetables, etc., in stock of water)

“So I would say that in the realm of typicality, no; however, if you subscribe to a more fluent definition of soup that doesn’t require boiled components, then yes.”