Joyce Rios:
CLASS OF 1971
Southeast High SchoolClass of 1971
Kansas city, MO
University of MissouriClass of 1981
Kansas city, MO
University of Missouri - Arts & SciencesClass of 1979
Kansas city, MO
Southeast Junior High SchoolClass of 1967
Kansas city, MO
Mark Twain Elementary SchoolClass of 1965
Kansas city, MO
Joyce's Story
Life
My Spouse
I met him at the Library, where both of us worked. He is a retired special librarian, since he was laid off in 2005.
My Pets
We have had fish and mice as pets, but since 1998, we have had one tabby cat, which we picked out from the Houston SPCA.
My Kids
Our oldest girl is a teacher with La Porte I.S.D. Our youngest girl is in Pharmacy school here in Texas, and participates in her church choir.
My Job
I am a bilingual K teacher, a position that I have held for nearly 20 years. It is a very demanding job, even more so now, with the demands of No Child Left Behind mandates imposed by the Bush administration. I have served on the LPAC, been a mentor teacher, and am the Bilingual K Team Leader for my campus.
Other Interests
I love to sing, web-surf and read.
School
My memories of life in high school are not really happy ones. Maybe they would have been better, had I had the opportunity to be more active in school activities. Our graduating class lived in some very trying times, with Civil Rights issues coming to a head, but that part of my high school experience, I think-- although it was difficult to live through--was a defining part of my character. I love imparting the values that I adopted from our multicultural environment and education to my students. Also, I have talked often with my daughters about my experiences in high school, how hard it was to live in fear--like some of us did--, but how important it was to be aware of cultures different from our own. I feel that this sharing with my daughters has played a BIG part in their character, as well. They have had the opportunities to be very active in school, and they are very accepting of many different cultures (as might be expected, also, due to the fact that they, themselves, are products of a bicultural marriage). My older daughter, for example, in her studies to enter the International Relations field, is benefiting from the contact she has with many people of Asian cultures, and took Chinese in college as required by her major.
College
This could be a rather LONG biography, but I will try to not make it too long ...
Of course, I started out studying Spanish at the UMKC campus, seeing that I lived in Kansas City, and I really wasn't interested in travelling far from home to go to college. Besides, it really wasn't an option; I didn't want to cause a burden for my parents, and we didn't qualify for financial aid (Dad made "too much" money!). So I stayed at the local university, and got both my B.A. and M.A. in Spanish and Romance Languages, respectively.
Once I did that, however, I soon discovered that I had NOWHERE to use it! The only place where you could use Spanish in Kansas City was in translation work (IF you had access to a word processor, which were VERY EXPENSIVE), in the import/export business, or as a teacher. In the meantime, I had work at the UMKC Library, where I was working as a clerk and a Library Assistant, and I met my future husband. We were just friends when we first met; he and I had in common our knowledge of the Spanish language (his home language when he was growing up), and we occasionally conversed in Spanish on breaks (although our contact was rather limited, seeing that I was just a clerk and he was a professional librarian). He ended up losing his contract with the University, and moved to Houston (NASA). We continued to communicate, long-distance, at first, then I moved over here after getting a job myself. I worked...Expand for more
at different jobs until we finally married in 1983. When we were writing and talking to each other long-distance, he had put the idea into my head to try and get my Texas teacher's certificate. In order to do that, I would spend another 8 years of off-and-on going to UHCL (in Clear Lake) to get the requisite courses (I forget how many hours). Since then, I STILL have to put in inservice hours to keep myself trained and abreast in my field.
Workplace
When I first started working, it was at clerical jobs, and since I didn't have good typing skills at the time, they were very menial jobs, like stuffing envelopes! I finally worked up to a regular full-time job at the UMKC Library, where I worked for a little over 5 years. (That's probably where I would be today, had I stayed in Kansas City, instead of following the advice of my future husband, who encouraged me to try to do something more with my life, which would involve finding work using my degree that I had worked so hard to earn.)
I moved to Houston in 1981 with the promise of a job in an import/export company. The job was too fast-paced, and I had to get out of there. I had a number of other jobs, none lasting more than 6 months to a year. Then my future husband became my husband; "we" soon after became pregnant, I found another permanent job, as a church secretary, AND I was accepted to the UHCL Teacher Preparation Program under a Title VII(?) grant! Everything at once! We stayed married, I had my baby that next August--and worked up to three days before she was born--, and I put in my first semester at the University--studying to become a bilingual teacher-- before having to leave for my baby's birth (then I dropped out of the grant temporarily; I returned 15 months later to complete my university studies toward certification).
I have worked in Texas public schools for nearly 20 years, most of which have been as a bilingual Kindergarten teacher. It is a job that has its demands, but it is, on the whole, a satisfying job. I like to think that I am making a difference in the lives of each student whose life I touch, each and every year. The only thing I don't like about my job is the increasing accountability demands imposed by people who don't have "anything better to do" than tell us teachers that we have to do more with less support, monetary as well as moral (although we have a HIGHLY supportive Principal). The threat of budgetary demands looms large over us as a whole, as well as the prospect of them telling us that the rights we have earned--smaller class size, due process, etc.--should be taken away.
Also, the way the politics of the bilingual program has recently has become a source of irritation, what with a change of Bilingual Coordinator just about every year! First, they say that we are not teaching the kids enough English, so we have to "remove" the Spanish-language materials (the materials in the kids' first language--contrary to bilingual education theory and practice), and we are in for a mad scramble to get MORE English materials. Then, the next year we are told that "it's okay, you can teach them (more) in Spanish". We are informed of these changes, without being given enough time or opportunity to get the materials together, and so have our classrooms ready for when the kids come in. We have lost several very good bilingual teachers over this flap. They should just let us teach, in the way that we know benefits the child, and quit the politicking!
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