South LA school teacher selected as a California teacher of the year inspires her 4th grade class



By Patrick Thelen
Associate Editor

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Ms. Márquez teaching her 4th grade students

“Class, stop working on your assignment. We´re going to go out for recess.”

When Verónica Márquez, a 4th grade teacher at Harmony Elementary School, said these words, there were no outbursts of happiness. Quite the contrary; for about 10 seconds, her students continued working on their task and showed no signs of wanting to stop.

Ms. Márquez, who was recently selected as one of five California Teachers of the Year, had thoughtfully crafted a lesson in which she mixed mathematics, art and history, and the children thoroughly appreciated it. After learning about different geometric shapes that included triangles, quadrilaterals, pentagons and hexagons, the students were told to create a portrait based on these newly learned forms. To help inspire them, Ms. Márquez talked to them about Pablo Picasso and showed them diverse cubist paintings that the Spaniard had created.

Once they finished their final touches, they quickly and quietly put their assignment away and followed their teacher’s instruction.

“To motivate my students, I try to do creative things they don´t usually see at home. Mixing art, music and technology can be very helpful. We also do a lot of reading in the classroom and sharing out loud. This helps my students make connections with what they experience at home,” says Ms. Márquez. “All of those things put together, create an environment in which students want to learn.”

Ms. Márquez, a UCLA graduate in sociology, has been teaching for 14 years. “I can´t remember when I first decided that I wanted to teach,” she said. “My mom says that I wanted to be a teacher ever since I was a child. She always noted that I wanted to play teacher with my dolls and my sister.”

Ms. Márquez, whose parents are Mexican and arrived in California in the 1970s, was born and raised in South LA, and she is strongly attached to her community. “There is so much history and so many good things coming from this community. I want my students to understand and know that.”

Being bilingual has been a huge asset in this teacher´s career. “In the community that I work with, knowing a second language is a huge plus. It allows you to create an automatic connection with the parents,” she says.

Harmony Principal Sylvia Salazar is in complete agreement. “Being bilingual is very important. It will not only allow a teacher to help a Latino student who is learning the English language; it will also allow the teacher to communicate with parents.”

Involving parents and showing them how to support their children´s learning is something that Ms. Márquez takes very seriously. “I always give parents my phone number and tell them to call me if they have any questions.”

Ms. Márquez also visits the homes of her students. “When I see that a student needs extra help or when parents can´t attend parent-teacher conferences, I will go to their homes.” Through the years, she has formed strong bonds with students and their families, and will sometimes visit them at birthday parties and other social events.

Achieving Results

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Classroom discussion

Giant Size Butterfly, a song created by Justin Roberts, welcomed the children on their way back from recess. Ms. Márquez, with the help of her Teacher Assistant Jazmin Albarrán –a South LA native who studied at Jefferson High School– used this song to conduct a class that was designed to teach her students how to make inferences and connections.

The level of participation and engagement among her students was huge. They actively participated throughout the entire class and listened to each other’s opinions with interest and respect. Mark, one of her students, said that “Ms. Márquez makes classes interesting. She pressures us to think, and it works.”

Classmate Luis agrees. “I like how she teaches. When we´re covering a difficult subject, she always finds a way to make us solve the problem.”

Last year, ninety percent of her students tested at grade level or above on state standardized tests in reading and math. In addition, four of her students obtained perfect math scores.

Ms. Salazar said that “what makes Ms. Márquez special is that she teaches from the heart. She teaches her students how to analyze and think critically and gives them the opportunity to interact and learn from each other.”

Challenges

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Harmony Elementary School

An important challenge teachers must confront is learning how to interact with students and parents coming from different cultural backgrounds. Ms. Márquez believes that during their university years teachers should receive instruction that will help them to understand different cultures. “Students from Mexico, Guatemala or El Salvador aren´t the same, and it is important that teachers recognize the differences,” she said.

Ms. Salazar, who was a teacher before becoming a principal, added that “we need to make sure we not only know how our students are doing academically, but also how they´re doing emotionally. Students will sometimes come to school with a heavy backpack. This backpack isn´t heavy because of their books, but because of the problems they bring with them. In order for us to be able to teach them, we must unload that backpack and make them feel good about themselves.”

The challenge is big. Nevertheless, both Ms. Márquez and Ms. Salazar are eager to continue confronting it.