Starting the year at MACES, no one expected there to be missing teachers. While there was one teacher ready to instruct the freshman Biology class, the teacher quit one week into the semester. From that week, there was an unfilled spot in the Biology department and one unfilled spot in the English department. Ms. Carvajal, a teacher who had been teaching for eight years prior, had left her position and her desk. Since then, freshmen have been left without two teachers, being the most impacted of the two missing teachers.
Later on in the year, Ms. Ochoa, who teaches Spanish, went on a temporary leave, leaving the ninth grade students with one less teacher.
Samuel Serrano, a freshman, had the unfortunate schedule of having an unfilled Biology teacher for his first period, unfilled English teacher for his third period, and a gone Spanish teacher for his fifth period. Serrano’s Mondays and Thursdays consisted of no teacher up until his seventh period where Serrano had Physical Education (P.E.). According to Serrano, he describes his day as, “I kind of liked those days because I had to do less work those days, so I could just tune out. Plus, those teachers were mostly laid back and just let us listen to music all day. I also had P.E., so I didn’t have much work that day.”
Giselle Najera, another freshman, had the misfortune of having an unfilled Biology teacher for her first period, unfilled English teacher for her third period, on-leave Spanish teacher for her fourth period, and a missing AVID teacher for her seventh period. She describes the work given in Biology as, “taking notes and reading from the textbooks because the sub wouldn’t teach us.”
On top of already having three missing teachers, Najera had to swap her seventh period teacher for a while because she had AVID. She had Ms. Perfecto at the start of the year, Mr. Bautista for a while, a substitute teacher for another while, and finally Ms. Garcia to finish the year. Despite constantly switching around, when asked if she felt AVID was still providing support, Najera says, “Yes, because we take notes, and we’re working on an essay. Sometimes we do presentation slides on a certain topic, and we take notes off of it.”
Jose Mata, a freshman, was another student among many who had a schedule with three missing teachers. His schedule consisted of an unfilled Biology teacher for his fourth period, unfilled English teacher for his fifth period, and a missing Spanish teacher for his sixth period.
Because there was no official teacher and no real authority role, Mata described a typical class as, “very chaotic…a lot of kids would get up and just start doing whatever—like play tag. If I were to look around the room, half the class would be doing work while the other half would be doing their makeup, playing video games, sleeping, or playing a ball game.”
