Image Credits: Valeria Alejandre
Huntington Park High School Teacher, Joaquin Mendibles will later on retire as an English teacher of 33 years.
Mr.Mendibles has been a teacher since the year of 2010.
He has taught honor, elective and content area classes. Although he’s taught different subjects, his main interest was always literature and writing.
Throughout his teaching career, Mr.Mendible’s favorite part of teaching was teaching his students literature. He has loved Literature since he was a high school student because of the reading and writing. A memorable moment as a teacher for him was “Teaching my students about a novel called Night Elie Wiesel regarding the holocaust and the projects we did around that book as a class. It had an impact on students’ lives and even community members we’ve interacted with in our projects.”
As a result of being a teacher for 33 consecutive years, his opinion and advice to new teachers and students can help them with knowing what to expect. One piece of advice he’d like to share to upcoming teachers or to those thinking of becoming a teacher is,
“Don’t become a teacher unless you love it and if you’re going to be in it for a long time. If you don’t love it, it’s not going to be an enjoyable experience for you and your students.”
Another piece of advice for students is, “You can’t be successful in education unless you become a better reader and writer. Spend less time on social media and get back to the basics of reading and writing”. This was his advice for students because many students today use a lot of social media and he thinks that the media is hurting their education.
After learning about his experience and the memories of Mr.Mendibles, we finally got to know what his plans are after working for 33 years. He can finally rest and enjoy his free time doing what he likes. His plans after retirement are not determined yet. His friends and family have always asked about his plans after retirement but he doesn’t have an exact plan. However, he does know what he doesn’t want to do.
“I’m not going to just sit around and watch YouTube. I know I’m going to do something I really enjoy and something I’ve wanted to do for a long time.”
Some examples of what Mendibles really wanted to do for a long time was to do volunteer work outside of school, churches and education departments. He would also love to spend more time with his children since he’s an older dad who can now help them with school work. He’d also do some fun activities like fishing, golf, and reading. “The combination of those activities will make up my time”.
Written by Julissa Montes, Staff Writer