Teacher feature: Ms. Alvarez under the microscope
Sydney Roker, Staff Writer
Sydney Roker: Thank you so much for doing this interview. Can you start off by talking a little bit about yourself and how you got started teaching?
Lauren Alvarez: I’m originally from Chicago and moved out to Murrieta. Not sure if you know where that is, but near Temecula wine country area an hour and a half from here. And I wanted nothing to do with that place because it’s very suburban and especially after moving from Chicago; so when I graduated high school I ended up going to UC Santa Cruz. I always knew I wanted to major in science and I ended up majoring in molecular cell and developmental biology. My original plan was to probably do something in the medical field, but because I am first generation here in the States, I didn’t come from any money and worked the entire time, so I was like maybe I should take a break after graduation and kind of reassess life. A former principal, the mom of a good friend of mine, said that I would make a really good science teacher just knowing who I was and so I was like well how hard can it be and let me check it out. The next thing I know I’m going back to school at Cal State Monterey Bay and finishing my teaching credentials so I could teach in chemistry and biology and stayed there, taught high school there for four years in Castroville and then I moved here and started teaching here at Samohi.
SR: So you didn’t always plan to teach?
LA: No, that was never the plan. And it’s not that I didn’t want to become a teacher. There are no educators in my family, and so I guess it wasn’t a profession that I had been exposed to which I feel like a lot of teachers are. They come from a line of educators or somebody in their family is in education, so it just wasn’t an option that I had previously explored. But you know I like being in school, clearly, and am enthusiastic about science, and it checked all the boxes that I liked and that somebody would want in a career, so here I am.
SR: Is there anything in your first few years of teaching that you didn’t expect?
LA: I didn’t expect to get as involved at school. At my old school it was a much smaller community. Our school was half the size of this school. It was mostly Latin, which is my background, so, culturally, I felt really connected to them. I didn’t realize how attached I would get to some of my kids over the years and how involved I would be. Anytime the kids needed a chaperone for a field trip, or somebody to sign off on something, or somebody looking to do community service hours or whatever it was, they could come up and ask me and I would always say, ‘yes’. I never thought that would be a part of teaching that I would have been a part of or liked because I didn’t do that in high school. I wasn’t involved in dance or certain clubs. I was only in sports and that’s all I did, so it was an unexpected growth I found myself in.
SR: Outside of school is there anything you like to do that people might not know?
LA: Me personally, I like to not see a screen at all. We’re on computer screens all the time. Pre-pandemic that was not the case. Now, because of the pandemic I just like being outside. Santa Cruz and that area is full of trees and nature, so I kind of miss that. And I have a dog so we go on lots of walks that don’t involve screens and I just spend time with my boyfriend and we walk our dog a lot. And I like to eat a lot. The nice thing about Santa Monica is that there is a lot of great food.
SR: Definitely. Thanks again for agreeing to do this, I’m glad I got to talk to you!
Portrait of Ms. Alvarez, a biology and chemistry teacher, who is in her second year at Samo.