This is the third in a series of stories about some of the CSUB Alumni Association's 2021-2022 scholarship recipients.
Vanessa Zepeda admires the work her principal and superintendent in the Standard School District do to support special ed students, but still sees gaps in the system.
Many of her moderately to severely disabled middle schoolers come to school not knowing their letters, how to tie their shoes or how to comb their hair. Her nonverbal “kiddos,” as she affectionately calls them, have unequal access to communication devices like iPads that drastically improve their ability to convey their needs and wants.
“I want to try and give these kids in the Oildale community everything we can to make them as successful as possible once they move up to high school,” Zepeda says, “because I know all of them want to make something of themselves.”
Zepeda hopes to achieve those things by continuing her education and, eventually, going into special education administration. She earned her liberal studies degree in 2019, credential to teach mildly to moderately disabled children in 2021, and now is working toward her master’s degree in education.
But before moving up into administration, Zepeda wants at least five years of classroom teaching under her belt. She’s well on her way.
During the 2019-2020 school year, Zepeda taught emotionally disturbed children in the Bakersfield City School District, many of whom have a hard time controlling their anger due to trauma. This past year, she pivoted to teaching moderately to severely disabled students, ones with conditions such as autism and Down syndrome, at Standard Middle School.
And if that wasn’t challenging enough, she did it in the middle of a global pandemic.
Zepeda started out the school year teaching virtually, but her students struggled so much that the school brought most of them back to campus. From October to March, Zepeda led the only class allowed to be on school grounds full-time, though some students continued to do distance learning. It was “exhausting,” she said.
“With lesson planning I had to think, ‘What am I going to do in person, what am I going to do online?’ she said, adding that in-person instruction was much, much easier. “But thankfully, all these programs started to pop up that made it easier to be interactive and engaging online.”
Zepeda is now teaching summer school on campus and hoping to enjoy all in-person instruction in the fall.