Scholarship profile: Veronica Jasso

Innovative “residency” prepares grad to teach sixth grade

By California State University, Bakersfield

June 23^rd, 2021

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

Veronica Jasso will walk into her first classroom feeling well-prepared for whatever comes her way.

When she begins teaching sixth grade at Bakersfield’s Stella Hills Elementary this fall, she will have had a full academic year of experience developing, delivering and modifying lessons in a variety of subjects.

She will have learned how to manage a classroom and differentiate instruction depending on individual student needs. And she will have not only persevered but thrived during the toughest year in modern education history –- pivoting to virtual instruction amid the pandemic.

“I just feel prepared,” Jasso said. “I’m ready to have my classroom. I’m excited to have my classroom.”

Jasso is so prepared because she completed the highly competitive Kern Urban Teacher Residency program, a partnership between CSUB and the Bakersfield City School District that provides special mentorship, coursework and professional development opportunities to aspiring teachers in exchange for a pledge they will teach in the district for four years. It also comes with a stipend that makes the full-time commitment possible.

This year, about 150 people are expected to apply for just 20 available spots.

Jasso made the cut with her high-energy, positive attitude and talent for relationship-building. During the 2020-2021 academic year, she co-taught fourth grade at Stella Hills and third grade at Dr. Juliet Thorner Elementary with mentor teachers.

Jasso was a bit timid when she first started co-teaching alongside Thorner’s Melissa Brandon, a CSUB alum who is going into her sixth year of teaching after a career in accounting.

But over time, Brandon said, Jasso grew more confident, comfortable being her bubbly, joking self, and adept at “scaffolding” – breaking lessons down into chunks and introducing various techniques to improve comprehension of each one.

“It was amazing to just sit there and watch the growth she made in her confidence and in her delivery of lessons,” Brandon said. “At the beginning I would kind of jump in and say, ‘OK, remember this, remember that.’ By the end, she was just taking off and doing the whole thing on her own.”

Third-grader Angelina Maldonado, left, shares her double bubble thinking map in class as Jasso, right photo, uses a video collaboration system called Swivel plus Zoom and a smart board to ask questions and provide feedback to her.

Jasso would also pick up where Brandon left off, like when Brandon introduced a new science textbook to the class and explained how information could be found not only in the main text but in pictures, captions and bar graphs.

Jasso solidified their comprehension by posing questions and suggesting where in the textbook pages they could find the answers to write on their whiteboards.

“You look up and all you could see was whiteboards with the same answer,” Brandon said. “She just really took what I did and ran with it.”

A growing movement

That’s exactly how the residency program is supposed to work. Residents watch, learn and implement. For the first few weeks they mostly observe their mentor teacher and then gradually take over more and more instruction until they’re doing most of the teaching.

Residents teach four days a week and take courses on the fifth day. They can substitute teach for their mentor teacher to earn extra income. The concept has proven wildly successful at CSUB and so is expanding.

The Kern Urban Teacher Residency was launched in 2016 as CSUB’s second teacher residency program. Since then, CSUB has developed residency programs with the Kern High School District, Greenfield Union School District and Visalia Unified School District. A fifth is developing between CSUB and the Panama-Buena Vista Union School District for special ed teachers.

“I hope that someday, everything in the credential program will be like a residency-based model because we’ve found such high-quality teachers coming out of our programs,” said Holly Gonzales, educational coordinator for teacher education at CSUB.

The Kern Urban Teacher Residency program is expecting to attract about 150 applicants for 20 open positions this year. Here is Jasso with a group of fellow residents (l to r): Leigh Whitson, Alyssa Aguirre, Deisy Hernandez, Jasso, Katelyn Hallmark and Kirsten Pierce. — The Kern Urban Teacher Residency program is expecting to attract about 150 applicants for 20 open positions this year. Here is Jasso with other residents (l to r): Leigh Whitson, Alyssa Aguirre, Deisy Hernandez, Jasso, Katelyn Hallmark and Kirsten Pierce.

So far, 94 students have come through the Kern Urban Teacher Residency program. BCSD, which like districts throughout California grapples with a teacher shortage, has been able to hire 100 percent and retain 90 percent of them, Gonzales said.

“The Bakersfield City School District board members and superintendent tell us, ‘We allot $1.3 million to keep this program running because we see the difference it’s making in our classrooms,’” she said. “’These 80 or so teachers are making a difference in kids’ lives. They’re passionate, they’re qualified and they want to stick around to serve the community.’”

But there’s room for improvement. Program administrators would like to better prepare residents for state teaching exams and ensure coursework aligns with the needs of always-evolving classrooms, Gonzales said.

“That will always be a growing area for us because times change,” Gonzales said. “Holy moly, we just had to take an entirely in-person program and make it virtual.”

Jasso, left, joins Brandon (middle) and another Kern Urban Teacher Residency student they invited to teach with them, Alyssa Aguirre, at a program completion ceremony.

The residency program has gotten more competitive as more CSUB students have wanted to “be part of a big movement, something bigger than themselves,” Gonzales said. The winning candidates must not only meet eligibility requirements but show they can build a rapport with students and colleagues.

Jasso proved that during the interview process and school year that followed, Gonzales said.

“She has such a positive disposition about her,” Gonzales said. “She could be having the worst day but she’ll always spin it and make it positive and know that she’s going to push through.”

The kids were so taken with Jasso that they’d spend their recess talking to her. And when another teacher resident was displaced from a classroom, Jasso and her mentor teacher invited her to teach with them.

“She’s kind of a fly-under-the-radar person,” Gonzales said. “If you were thinking about a classroom of kids, she’s the quiet student who gets her work done and then silently helps the rest of the people.”

Happy to help

Jasso at her CSUB graduation, holding her decorated grad cap. — Jasso earned a bachelor’s degree in liberal studies from CSUB in 2018 and eventually wants to earn master’s degrees in instruction and curriculum as well as educational administration.

Jasso has wanted to teach since she was a fourth grader asking her mother to buy Expo markers and whiteboards with which to make her little brother complete addition and multiplication problems. At Wasco High School, she loved the feeling of being able to share knowledge when she translated for a student who couldn’t speak English.

Jasso funded her CSUB education through scholarships, loans, a little bit of help from her parents and full-time work doing Internet car sales, meaning she was either in school or at work all day, seven days a week. Along the way she did volunteer and course work not only in BCSD but at Stockdale Elementary and the McFarland Unified School District.

While teaching at Stella Hills, Jasso will be pursuing her master’s in curriculum and instruction with plans to also get a master’s in educational administration to become a school principal. But for now, she’s focused on getting her first classroom in order and decorated with a modern farmhouse theme.