Her turn to teach

Scholarship recipient pursues her career dreams after putting family first

By California State University, Bakersfield

June 29^th, 2020

This is one in a series of stories about out 2020-2021 alumni scholarship recipients.

Christina Giese first tried to go to college after graduating from Bakersfield’s West High School in the spring of 1993. Then life intervened.

That September, at age 18, she met her future husband at Bakersfield College. By October they were dating and within a year they were married and had welcomed their first child, a son. Over the next year they bought a house and welcomed their oldest daughter.

“God's timing sometimes feels more like a tornado,” Giese joked.

Giese attempted to return to college several times, but two more children came and she took it to mean her job was to raise her children and support her husband as he pursued his degrees and high school teaching career.

Her turn finally came in 2013 when her two oldest were in college and her two youngest in high school.

“Pretty soon it was going to be a matter of, ‘Everyone’s out of high school, what’s mom going to do?’”

What Giese did is earn degrees from Bakersfield College and CSUB – taking some classes with her older two children – and is now seeking her master’s degree in English and clearing her credentials to teach high school.

Thanks to the Kern High Teacher Residency program, a partnership between CSUB and the Kern High School District to recruit and train teachers, she already has a couple years of teaching under her belt, including a solo turn at Arvin High School this past year.

It’s been a “joy” watching her achieve her dreams, said Giese’s oldest daughter, Amber.

“When she got her undergrad, she was basically just this burst of joy, like ‘I did it! I did it!’” said Amber, who will be a double CSUB alumna herself when she finishes up her master’s in English this winter. “And you can’t help but feel super excited along with her.”

Giese’s West High School graduation photo.

A life-long struggle

Giese brings to the classroom the experience of having struggled with learning her whole life. When she read books growing up, words and letters would move on the page. She thought she was "losing her mind."

It wasn't until high school that she first heard about dyslexia and wondered if that's what was affecting her reading. When she got to Bakersfield College, a child development instructor recognized her symptoms during class one day and told her more about the disability.

“I cried because that was the first time somebody explained to me that I wasn’t crazy; my brain was simply wired differently,” Giese said.

Over time she’s developed tricks to make sense of sentences she initially misreads. Sometimes she just has to read paragraphs multiple times to understand them.

“I hope it has made me a more patient teacher,” Giese said. ”It’s definitely made me more aware.”

For example, Giese doesn't like the term "the basics" because it makes people with learning disabilities feel stupid for not always understanding what some consider "basic" concepts.

Sometimes Giese will intentionally make mistakes on the whiteboard and wait for students to correct her. She does it to show them that getting things wrong is normal and that there are ways of correcting people without making them feel dumb.

“The most important thing to her when it comes to teaching is being able to be the teacher she wishes she’d had as a kid,” Amber said. “Being able to personally say, ‘Hey, I see you’re struggling; how can I help?’ Being able to notice students who may need an extra leg up and give them that leg up.”

The Giese family says goodbye to Giese's son, Timothy, as he heads out for boot camp. Left to right: Christina, Gina, Timothy, Amber, Gary, (front center) Emily.

A mom in the classroom

During the 2018-2019 academic year, Giese was in the first class of Kern High Teacher Residency students and paired up with English mentor teacher Carrie Morgan at West High, her alma mater.

Giese’s age and experience as a mother aided her teaching, Morgan said.

“One of her strengths was building relationships with the kids. The kids really connected with her on different levels,” Morgan said. “And once she did that, they were more willing to listen to what she had to say academically.”

In March of that year, Morgan broke her ankle and had to turn the class over to Giese. Morgan helped her plan the first week and then said, “Look, this is a perfect opportunity for you to do this yourself.”

“She took over all the planning, she took over the grading, she took over pretty much everything. I was like a consultant on the couch at home,” Morgan said. “And she did a great job.”

While taking her CSUB residency class on the Arvin High campus, Giese learned about an English teaching job opening up there and applied. She’d earned her Expository Reading and Writing Curriculum certification, qualifying her to teach the curriculum created by the CSU.

An informal chat with the principal turned into a more formal interview, and Giese was hired. She credits the residency program for her success.

“The experience and training it offered me, along with having the opportunity to talk with Mr. Watts and pick his brain about his vision for Arvin High outside of a formal interview, gave me the confidence I needed while going through the interview,” said Giese. "It was a very unique opportunity, and I was very blessed to have experienced it."

Giese teaches during her residency at West High.

Getting kids to show up

When COVID-19 hit, Giese's heart broke for her seniors, who were OK academically because they’d completed most of their coursework but missed out on grad night, prom, and a traditional commencement.

As for her sophomores, Giese really worried about the number of those who had uneven access to technology for distance learning.

She’s hoping students and teachers can go back to the classroom, at least part of the week, this fall to head off a possible increase in the dropout rate. Assuming some virtual instruction will be required, she and her colleagues are developing visually entertaining lessons that will make students more likely to show up.

Lack of technology is only one of her concerns. Another is the fact that “A lot of [her students] have so many responsibilities at home: taking care of the house, taking care of the siblings, or just flat-out going to work with mom and dad. School just does not even fit on the radar,” she said. “And sometimes mom and dad don’t always understand why that’s an issue.”

As for her own schooling, Giese is on track to be fully credentialed at the end of the 2020-2021 school year. Her alumni scholarship will help foot the bill. She’ll use anything that’s left over to help build up her library at school.