The staff of the week includes Mrs. Leonard a teacher here at Esperanza. This is the first week returning from winter break.

What do you teach here at Esperanza?

“I teach English 1, AP Lang I also teach AVID 11 I am the AVID coordinator, I am the English department chair and that’s it right now.” 

Why did you choose to teach out of all careers?

“Oh man to be honest I never saw myself doing any other career I don’t think I knew I wanted to be a teacher until college I thought I might wanna be so I started by becoming an instructional aid at a high school and I worked there all through college while I was there I started to realize that, that was what I liked and wanted to do I did debate over Elementary and High school it was a question of language arts and history those are the only two subjects I thought I might wanna do, I landed on language arts because I really love literature and I also love having discussions with students and I felt that I could do that more here.”

Out of all schools, why did you choose Esperanza?

“I graduated from Esperanza so it is a degree of comfort being familiar but also because I was looking for a teaching job in 2009 it was post-recession it was impossible to find teaching jobs anywhere and Esperanza just happened to be hiring because Yorba Linda just opened and half of their staff moved up there so they needed positions to fill.”

Mrs. Leonard continues to help her students be successful in life and in school. Her support helps students be successful here and do well in life.