Ms. Mandracchia is a 9th-grade English teacher in the CPDA Magnet. She has been teaching at Grant for two years. Her teaching career began in 2015 when she started teaching at a public school in Brooklyn, New York. After four years, she moved to Bogota, Colombia, where she taught at a private international school for two years. After her journey in Columbia, she moved to California to continue teaching and has been here since her last move.
Ms. Mandracchia enjoys going on hikes in her free time, allowing her to discover new places and take in the beautiful California weather. Last summer, she went on a 30-mile trek through the Eastern Sierra Mountains in North California with just a few essentials, such as water, her telephone, and snacks. Other than hiking, she is a big fan of reading literature. Her favorite book is “The Dispossessed” by Ursula K. Le Guin, a science fiction novel about how different societies develop on other planets. She also enjoys art and painting with watercolor and acrylic paint.
Here’s a take on what Ms. Mandracchia has to say about her job:
Q: What's the best advice you can give first-year students?
A: The best advice I can give freshmen is to try and view their education as an opportunity and to remember that, as freshmen, you are only at the beginning of your journey through high school. But in high school, everything matters because everything stays with you. So as much as the end feels far, remember that what you do today is going to stay with you, and at the same time, there is always an opportunity to grow and better yourself.
Q: What made you want to go into teaching?
A: I've always wanted to be a teacher, but in high school, it's not very cool to want to be a teacher. So I thought I’d do film or TV, but when I went to college, and I learned how the world works and what it would take to make the world a place I want to live in, I felt like becoming a teacher was what I was meant to do. At first, I even tried to get a different job after high school because I'd heard teaching is tough, but at the end of the day, I just felt like I was it was what I was called to do, and gives me a lot of fulfillment and it also gives me the opportunity to be a learner I learned just as much for my students as I hope to teach them.
Q: Why did you choose to teach English?
A: I studied history actually in college, but I love books, and I think through English, you can really talk about anything since English is the art of reading and writing, and you can read and write about anything in the world. English offers a unique opportunity to focus just on how students think critically and how they express creativity what we talked about can really shift as I shift and grow, and as conversations, you could have the world changes, so I said I love English because there's a lot of flexibility and the conversations you could have with students.
Q: Can you describe your teaching style?
A: I think part of my teaching style is community, so learning happens best when students feel like they're part of a community in a classroom. I think everything I do is found in that principle that we all thrive when the community is healthy, so there is a lot of relationship-building. The other thing about my teaching style is valuing that the Freshmen are at this juncture in their life where they still have a lot of this childlike energy and joy that a lot of older kids outgrow, but they also want to be taken seriously as adults. So when you can tap into that joy and the desire to be mature, there's something really special about freshmen. Finally, I'm just keeping it challenging because I've learned over the years that even if students like the easy teachers, those aren't the experiences they value in the end.
Section Editor: Nicole Boyadjian
Editor-in-Chief: Nensi Hayotsyan
