There are many high schoolers who may feel misunderstood or are not developing a connection with their teachers. He isn’t just known for being an excellent teacher, but also for how he connects with his students. Mr.chaidez is a social studies teacher at West Leyden. Just like most of his students he’s Mexican American.
He is able to understand his students because he’s been through similar or the same experiences. He says, “I can really connect to you guys. Because, it’s not that you can’t connect to your other teachers, but I just get it. Like, if you’re like, oh I didn’t finish my homework because I was quince to practice last night, I get it”. Just like many of his students his ethnicity is very important to him and it shapes who they are as a person. “My ethnicity is really, really important to me, being Mexican and everything that I do is a part of it. My parents came from Durango, and they moved to Chicago in the 60s, and they stayed here. My grandma came here when she was, like 19, had all her kids here and they all grew up here. Then my grandma moved back to Mexico a few years ago.” he said while staring into the distance.
He talks about how high school was for him and his experiences in high school as a Mexican American and the difference between it and college. “High school was interesting, there were a lot of people that were like me there, you know, there were a lot of other people with the same culture there, so that was nice. And then in college, it was different, because when I went to college, I went from being in school with a lot of people that had the same culture, to me to being the only one in class.” He continues as he crosses his legs, “So, when I went to college, I would be the only Hispanic person there and that was very different. So that was kind of interesting to get used to, then I would talk to people, and they would not understand certain references and stuff like that, but when I went to high school, everybody knew” mr. Chaidez said. He didn’t get much help from his parents when going to college and didn’t really know what to expect. He hopes his students don’t go through the same struggles as him and will use his own experiences to help his students as much as he can. “Going to college was hard. My parents didn’t go to college so I couldn’t really ask my parents or family for advice or help because I was the first one of them to go and I didn’t really know what college was like. I had to figure all of that out on my own. It was really hard, because I was like 18, and I was signing up for 1000’s of dollars in loans. That’s why I think it’s nice to teach, because a lot of other people at Leyden are the same as me. Their parents didn’t do that stuff. So I could give them advice and help them through all that”.
Using his knowledge and own experiences he will help his students through challenges and difficulties so they don’t have to deal with the same things he did.
