When students in Kim Rojas’ culinary class at Valencia High School walk into their first class on Monday, they’ll be greeted by an assortment of ethnic foods.
Their task: to identify each food in a blind taste test.
It’s the first step for those culinary students on what Rojas hopes to be a journey toward becoming more complete cooks.
“It is a practical learning,” Rojas said. “So there’s more about learning how to do it as you go … We start really foundational and then grow. Next thing you know, we’re making homemade pastas.”
Teachers across the William S. Hart Union High School District’s campuses were putting the finishing touches on their classrooms Friday before getting ready to welcome students for the first day of school on Monday.
Over at Arroyo Seco Junior High, band teacher Kevin Fulleman was cleaning the different parts of a trumpet and arranging instruments for students to check out.
He said he feels as nervous for the first few days as students tell him they feel.
“You have these thoughts that creep into your mind as you approach it where you’re like, ‘Do I even remember how to teach?” Fulleman said. “But as you get back into the classroom and get things settled in, you’re like, ‘OK, no, I remember this.’ You sort of remember your old grooves and then the nervousness turns just more into excitedness.”
“Excitedness,” as Fulleman put it, was on full display at both Arroyo Seco and Valencia on Friday.
Amanda Low, a chemistry teacher at Valencia, popped into fellow chemistry teacher Michelle Fischer’s classroom, only to find she wasn’t the only visitor. Principal Pete Getz had stopped by while touring the campus and decided to help Fischer put a couple of items up on her classroom wall.
The Valencia principal, who is set to leave the district at the end of the month for another job, said he’s looking forward to the energy that the students bring to the campus at the beginning of each school year.
“It’s just the energy on the campus, having everybody come back,” Getz said. “People are refreshed. They’re in a good place. They’re excited. They’re looking forward to being with one another again. And so, it just has that really cool, good vibe.”
Part of attaining that vibe is ensuring that each student is in the right classes and their schedules match up with what they had wanted, according to Arroyo Seco counselor Jesse Marshall. He said that makes the weeks leading up to the first day a little stressful, but the joy of seeing students enjoying their days makes that worth it.
“We want to make sure that every student that first day of school has a classroom to go to, has a schedule with six different classes that are correctly placed on the right teams with the right teachers,” Marshall said, adding that he loves the first day of school and being able to talk nervous students, and parents, through it.
Counselors aren’t the only ones on campuses who are doing what they can to minimize nervous feelings. Nanthapha Honig, an eighth-grade science teacher at Arroyo Seco, was setting up calculator cubbies and a pencil station for students to have easy access to their tools.
She said she knows students talk to each about what teachers are supposedly like, so she enjoys redecorating her classroom each year to keep things fresh.
“So, when they come in, they’re like, ‘Wait a minute, that’s not what she had,’” Honig said. “So that, and just the look of their excitement or terror or fear or anxiety or nervousness — all of the different emotions coming in and just easing them into the school year, that’s the best part.”
Plans for keeping students entertained and occupied outside the classroom have also been made. Arroyo Seco Associated Student Body director Jessica Meraz said it’s her job to “create a campus that they are excited to be at.”
“All the work that we put in during the summer months starts to pay off when they walk on campus,” Meraz said. “I love to see a shy seventh-grader walk on campus a little hesitant, not quite sure about themselves, and then within a week or two, feeling comfortable and excited to be here, and that gives me so much joy, seeing them enjoy themselves here.”
Seeing former students and learning what they are doing is another thing many teachers look forward to, Fischer said, as is learning all about their new students and watching them grow throughout the year.
Those two things, she said, are a couple of her favorite things about the start of school.
“Taking the time and getting to know them, making sure that I make the time and squeeze that in where I can, because you see a lot of kids,” Fischer said. “So, it’s getting to know them, and actually, it’s also seeing my old students. They come back and tell me how their summer went, and also how they did on the (Advanced Placement) exam. I love that. I love hearing their successes.”
