Scholarship Profile:

Jessica Hernandez got hooked on teaching early

By California State University, Bakersfield

June 3^rd, 2021

This is the first in a series of stories about some of the CSUB Alumni Association's 2021-2022 scholarship recipients.

For as long as she can remember, Jessica Hernandez has wanted to teach.

As a first grader, she admired how her teacher found creative ways to communicate with her classmates. Not long after that, Hernandez was creating school worksheets for her little sister and cousin to complete.

By fourth grade, she was inking math problems on the bathroom mirror with Expo markers purchased by her mother.

“I have always been very attached to kids, especially to see them learning,” Hernandez said. “Oh, man, it’s just the biggest reward to see when kids are progressing.”

Today Hernandez is a semester away from completing the Kern Teacher Residency Program, a partnership between CSUB and the Greenfield Union School District, and closer to fulfilling her dream of becoming a full-time classroom teacher in the district she grew up in.

During the year-long program, students spend every Monday through Wednesday co-teaching a class with a mentor teacher, Thursday taking classes led by CSUB and Greenfield faculty, and Friday earning extra money substitute teaching.

Hernandez spent the first half of this year co-teaching a second-grade class at Palla Elementary, most of the time via Zoom. After four weeks of observing her mentor teacher and teaching a few subjects she was comfortable with, Hernandez took over the class, including lesson planning, instruction and the especially difficult task of holding the attention of 30 little ones via computer screen.

Hernandez did a lot of learning of her own.

“My mentor was blunt. She told me in the beginning that I didn’t know what I was doing, (saying), ‘Honey, they’re not listening to you. You need to hold them accountable,’” Hernandez said. “She would give me feedback and suggestions every day and the next day I would try it, and it would help so much.”

Hernandez is now excited to complete her residency this fall teaching fifth grade in Greenfield's Fairview Elementary. She’s always wanted to teach in Greenfield because she attended its schools and her children will attend them as well.

Hernandez inherited a love of learning from her mother, who read at least two books to her kids before putting them to bed each night and earned a college degree later in life to leave migrant fieldwork behind.

“My mom just really showed me that you can do better things with education,” Hernandez said.

Hernandez’s college path has not been a straight one, however. She started at Bakersfield College after graduating from Ridgeview High School in 2012 but left after getting pregnant with her now-7-year-old son, Anthony. She returned in 2016 and graduated in 2019 before transferring to CSUB.

Hernandez was so determined to not let anything derail her education again that she loaded up on classes and graduated from CSUB in three semesters (plus summer school) rather than four, despite also having a baby girl during that time.

In the fall of 2017, Hernandez’s due date and the start of school both fell in late August, but she enrolled anyway. She was in class for a week or two when Aubrey, now 3, arrived. Hernandez took only a week off from classes before returning as a mother of two.

“I made the decision to have another one and complete my education,” Hernandez said. “I felt like they were both important.”

Not only did she earn her bachelor’s degree in liberal studies in December 2020, but she made the Dean’s List every semester. Her plan is to finish up her credential this December, enroll in the master’s in education program in January 2022, and begin applying for full-time teaching positions the following August.

“I believe the valuable information that I am learning will allow me to become a great teacher,” Hernandez wrote in her scholarship application. “I want to see all children succeed. Every child has (the) potential to be someone great and I want to instill that in every child.”