Sylvia is a bilingual elementary school teacher with the Long Beach Unified School District as well as a recipient of the White House Champions of Change designation as recommended by the Hispanic Education Commission. Sylvia walks us through a typical day in a bilingual classroom as well as the events that led up to receiving a call from the White House.
Transcript
>> My name is Sylvia Padilla. I am a bilingual educator. I teach elementary school here in Long Beach Unified. And I have been working for over 26 years, all at the same school. It is, the name of the school is Patrick Henry. It is known for being a school that teaches biliteracy, high academic achievement, and multicultural abilities within all the students. It's a wonderful school. For me, as a teacher, it starts at 5:00 in the morning. I get up; 5:30 I'm already reading my content, my, planning my day. I arrive at 8:00 to my classroom, make sure everything is set. At 9:00, students come in. I teach from 9 to 3 every content, two languages. The students go home. I keep a few students after school to help them. I do some tutoring after school. Then maybe I'm doing some extracurricular activity like teaching dance for another hour. I don't get home to between, until 6:00 usually. And then it starts all over again. We kept children of all types. We have learning disabled students. We have students who have challenges. You have students who are incredibly capable. You know, you have average students, so you have everything. Very interesting population, and they all achieve. We work together. They learn to work together. They learn to teach each other and help each other. And to be able to go from Spanish to English; the morning is in Spanish in my case, and the afternoon is in English. And it doesn't really matter what language you're teaching, it just very natural. It just happens.
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