On Thursday the 3rd of October, I had the pleasure of interviewing Sandra Tunis, a Spanish teacher here at Renton High School. Ms. Tunis has been teaching for a long time, in fact, she has been teaching for 20 years, 9 of those years have been spent here at Renton High School. When I questioned her on what her biggest challenge working as a teacher here she said, ”I feel sad and disappointed when students don’t have the resources they need to do well. Mostly when they don’t have access or they have challenges outside of school that impact their ability to succeed at school.” 

Ms. Tunis is skilled in connecting with her students, she even said that her greatest strength as a school employee is that she can connect well students. Ms. Tunis said that her current goal as a teacher is to continue doing what she’s doing, but her long term goal is to teach English in foreign Spanish speaking countries, most likely Mexico. She stated that her favorite teaching moment is when the whole class is really engaged and involved in a story that the class is creating or when they are playing a game.

If her coworkers are having a bad day or just need motivation, Ms. Tunis will try to be social and encourage them on bad days. Being a teacher is hard work, and according to Ms. Tunis by trying to share the workload, It makes the hard job of being a teacher a bit easier. Although teachers try to be friendly with each other, it doesn’t always work out. Ms. Tunis says that when she is having trouble with coworkers her solution to solve the problem is to not address it right away, but instead, wait and use directness and curiosity to solve it. She says that her biggest accomplishment as a school employee is how she learns a lot about social justice and how she works with a diverse group of people

Finally, when I asked Ms. Tunis what advice she would have for aspiring teachers, she said, “The most important thing in teaching is building the relationships with students and coworkers because it doesn’t matter how much you love your subject area and how much you know if you don’t have the kind of relationships where people want to learn from you.”