Courtesy: Laura Ochoa

Laura Ochoa with her students at Peak Tahoma High School in San Jose.

Courtesy: Laura Ochoa

Laura Ochoa with her students at Height Tahoma High School in San Jose.

Laura Ochoa
Dec seven, 2021

I started my career as a teacher driven by a want to aid support young people and create a positive, lasting affect on the world. I retrieve that's how most teachers start out their careers.

After a mere five years, I found myself disheartened and disappointed by the system. Rather than developing lifelong learners and inspiring futures, I felt like a cog in a massive machine, churning out graduates with the goal of only earning a high school diploma. We were pushing students more than rapidly toward a end line that didn't experience meaningful.

I plant myself asking:Is this really the point of high school?

I could accept left teaching, merely I didn't. Instead, I constitute a better path, one that felt much closer to my original vision for beingness an educator and a far cry away from the diploma and test score factories where I started my career.

I began working at a different public school. At present in my fifth year teaching at Summit Tahoma High Schoolhouse in San Jose and 10th year equally a instructor, here's what I've learned: If we want students to thrive — if we want to truly set them to live fulfilled, purposeful lives — and so we have to modify our understanding of what the "finish line" is and therefore alter the way we structure our schools and measure success.

In curt, we have to redefine the point of school.

Nosotros're redefining success past request our alumni about their lives after graduation. Our measurement of success is how they're doing in life afterwards they leave. Did we gear up them for life? Exercise they have strong relationships? A sense of purpose? A strong community? Financial independence?

When I focus on the well-being of my students commencement, and things like test scores and diplomas 2d, my unabridged feel as an educator changes for the ameliorate.

At Peak Tahoma, I'1000 getting to actually know a grouping of students over four years through my mentor group. Every pupil at Summit has a mentor — normally a teacher — and a mentor group. Nosotros work together over the iv years at school. Nosotros come across daily to talk about day-to-twenty-four hour period life simply likewise to work toward goals in school and life. We explore colleges together and share challenges knowing our group volition support u.s.a..

My first mentee group, the Blue Strips, went from not knowing one another to being a family. Over iv years, we got to really know i another. I wasn't just teaching them Spanish; with this group of students, I was helping them with English language, science, history, whatever life threw at them. It'south powerful. And now, I'one thousand starting that over once more with a new group of freshmen. It's heady to exist building those relationships again — especially now that I know exactly what's possible.

It's not just the educator experience that transforms. The same is true for our students.

In a survey of all Summit alumni from 2007 to 2016, we asked about their lives at present, and more than 70% reported loftier levels of overall well-being. And virtually 55% of our alumni have completed a bachelor's caste to date. This tells me that when you shift the emphasis abroad from our traditional conception of success and focus instead on what really matters, you lot see ameliorate outcomes across the lath.

Earning a loftier school diploma is important, and we work hard to ensure that our students earn a diploma that ensures they are eligible for higher. Only this is just a milestone. It'south not the finish line.

The point of high school shouldn't be a diploma.

The signal of high school — the point of all school — should be closer to the reasons teachers start teaching in the commencement place: to support students, to inspire futures and to create fulfilled adults.

If we do that, non only might we modify the trajectory of the instruction profession, but we might actually fix our state's young people to lead lives of purpose and significant, filled with happiness, community and stability.

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Laura Ochoa is a Spanish teacher for grades 9-12 at Acme Tahoma High School in San Jose.

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