From Student to Teacher: Q&A with Aleyda Solis-Cano

[Note: this interview has been edited for length and clarity]

Teaching is one of the most popular career choices for English students after they graduate from Texas A&M. According to Texas A&M’s Career Center, 37% of English students who graduated in 2018 or 2019 became a teacher or a professor after graduating. We talked with Aleyda Solis-Cano, a former student and current English teacher at Cypress Ridge High School in CFISD. Solis completed her undergraduate degree in English and also got her Master of Education degree from Texas A&M and has been teaching for five and a half years.

Q: Did you always want to be a teacher?

A: Yes and no. I recently found a letter to myself that I did in elementary school—I don’t know what class it was for or when I wrote it specifically—but we had to write about where we saw ourselves in 10 years. I wrote that I was going to be a teacher. It was something that I wanted to do at an early age, and I feel like I changed, but then I went back into it. Actually, when I came into A&M, I was a biology major, but after a while, I realized where my strengths were, and I switched to English.

Q: What is your favorite part about teaching?

A: For me, my favorite part is being with the students, being a positive influence on them, leading them, and being that person that believes in them. I really had great teachers growing up that believed in me, and I feel like that’s part of the reason why I am where I am.

Q: What are some of the biggest challenges that you face in teaching?

A: I think at the beginning, it was a matter of learning what the expectations were for teachers. I came in thinking that my responsibility was to teach, but there’s a whole lot more to teaching. There’s also classroom management, learning how to work in a team, and effectively sharing your ideas.

Q: Do you have any advice for current English students that are considering being a teacher after graduation?

A: I feel like for teaching, you just really need to get yourself in the classroom. Observation is going to give you a feel, but when you’re the teacher, it’s a whole different experience. I would say to try it out, and even try it out for more than a year because usually that first year is a little difficult. It takes a while to be the best teacher you can be, but it is definitely worthwhile. The beauty of teaching is that every day is a new opportunity for you and your students. If something doesn’t go as planned, you can start fresh the next day.

Q: Do you feel like your undergraduate and graduate education at Texas A&M prepared you for being a teacher? Were you well-equipped going into the field of teaching?

A: I feel like it definitely did help me, especially my master’s degree in combination with my English degree. Since I was just majoring in English, I didn’t really have a feel for the education aspect, so the Master of Education program really helped me out in learning how to create lesson plans, how to use applications that will make student learning more engaging, and how to assess student learning. I feel like it was really helpful.

Q: What has teaching in COVID been like? What strategies have you come up with, and what challenges are you facing?

A: Yes, it has definitely been a different year this school year. At the beginning, especially, it felt overwhelming. We didn't quite have a specific plan in place because everything was just up in the air, and it was an unprecedented circumstance. We didn't really know how it was going to work in terms of educating the students and forming relationships with them while keeping them safe. Right now, our school is doing a hybrid learning style, so we have students online and we have students face-to-face. It just took a lot of practice in learning how to navigate the online platform and serving both remote and face-to-face students at the same time. It's a whole lot better now that we are more comfortable with the system in place, but it took some getting used to. That’s something about teaching as well. You have to learn to be flexible. That’s something that really stood out to me this year.

The ability to connect with my students is really important to me, and it has been a lot more difficult this year, even with the face-to-face students because of the masks and the Plexiglas. This year it’s been difficult to connect, overall, with all students. With the online students, I connect with them through Zoom, just talking to them about their life, and making connections that way. I'm also trying to do a challenge between classes, like a competition, to see if I can get them more engaged.

Really, it's funny because for me, going into teaching, I thought it was just teaching, but then it's all these other things. Now, the virtual learning adds on to that. It’s good, though, because we are learning new platforms and strategies. There are some things that we might use that will be helpful even after this.