Staff Spotlight – Dr. Marisa

Melanyn Alvarado Estrada, Student Journalist

I had the honor of interviewing one of the coolest teachers in MTS Secondary. I present to you Dr. Marisa! If you don’t already know, she is one of our few bilingual teachers and she also helps with translating. She is also our community engagement coordinator. She didn’t know she wanted to become a teacher until she was a sophomore in her undergraduate program. She was tutoring a student, and because of her patience they recommended that she become a teacher because she’d be great at it.  The more she thought about it and the more they persuaded her, the more she realized it might be a great job for her. She decided to go for it she instantly fell in love with it. She decided to teach high school instead of elementary or middle school because when she was our age she was misunderstood, and she wants to help students that are in the same position she was in. Her goal is and always will be for us to be able to know that she understands us and that she is here for us. As a student myself, I love that I’m able to have someone that I can talk to or come to for anything I need, especially as a Latina woman. Something no one knew about Dr. Marisa is that she is a bad-ass merengue dancer (her words!), and that she once interviewed for a position as a flight attendant!