Mrs. Rivas didn’t always know that she was going to be a high school Spanish teacher.

Her career choice changed quite a few times throughout her life. She first wanted to be a music major and then she switched to political science, where she’d be working in Washington D.C.

A little while later, she met her husband and that’s when she decided to settle down and be a Spanish teacher.

Now, she has her bachelor’s degree in psychology, master’s in international relations and a Spanish speaking certificate.

“I prefer teaching teenagers over little kids because I don’t think it would be fun to be with the same kids all day every day,” Mrs. Rivas said.

She has been teaching high school Spanish for six years now and in the future she hopes to teach Spanish at a community college. She also wants to teach Spanish speaking baseball players English in the Cardinal baseball organization.

Mrs. Rivas is very patient which helps with teaching high school students. She also says that being flexible and being able to bond with your students helps a lot too.

Mrs. Rivas is able to teach students just how close the world is related to each other.

“Mrs. Rivas goes above and beyond to help her students understand Spanish,” sophomore Cate Elam said. “She loves watching her students succeed and will do anything to help them. Mrs. Rivas brightens my afternoons everyday when she says hola.”

Teaching is a lot of fun for Mrs. Rivas but it also comes with a lot of paperwork which is her least favorite part.

Her teaching style is very student friendly. She tries to switch what she does every day up, to keep the students engaged and not get bored of the same routine every day.

Mrs. Rivas is a part-time teacher, so she is able use the hours that she doesn’t teach to get caught up on work and manage her time.

Another area of teaching that Mrs. Rivas is good at is to tell when her students are having a bad day. She tries to talk to them about what is wrong, and with them opening up and talking to her it’s able to let them forget about the problem for a little while and focus on the activity that day.