Ms. Izquierdo is an Algebra 2 teacher at Miami Senior High who loves her students and the subject she teaches with all her heart.
Teacher Life
Ms. Izquierdo is super chill and enjoys teaching her students as much as she can. She loves many things about her teaching job: “I love my team, the population of students, and the fact that I really get to see my students grow.”
When asked about her favorite thing about Algebra 2, Ms. Izquierdo’s eyes lit up with sparkles when given the opportunity to talk about what she loves most: “I love the amount of detail involved around the subject and how everything makes logical sense.”
She has her own unique teaching methods. “I preface every lesson so I’m ready to teach every single detail about it,” she said. “I frequently ask my students questions to keep them engaged. And I also purposely and not so purposely make mistakes so my students can catch on to it.”
It is also a no-go for Ms. Izquierdo that one of her students is left behind. “I would have a conversation with the student to understand what is really going on before I let them fall behind,” she said.
Inside the heart
Ms. Izquierdo is a passion-driven teacher, she LOVES what she does, so she’s always full of energy to teach to the best of her abilities. She said that she loves seeing her students grow, learn, and really understand something. But her overflowing happiness sometimes wears off—as does everyone else’s—and when that happens, she has a few secrets—not so secret anymore—techniques to bring herself back up, such as talking to her team and reading a special envelope she has that’s filled with praise from past and present students.
When her students accomplish their goals, she feels like she did right by them, because “probably not every teacher has done that for them.” On the opposite side, when a student of hers is caught cheating on a test, no matter the subject, she feels super disappointed. “It makes me feel like I failed as a teacher for that student,” says Ms. Izquierdo.
Childhood
Ms. Izquierdo is an MHS graduate who chose to attend because of the teaching magnet. She went to the University of Florida for 3 years, and she studied accounting, math (what a shock right?), and elementary education. After high school she wanted to be an accountant, then switched to teaching instead. Surprisingly—not really—her favorite subject back in high school was always math and her accounting class.
School System
Ms. Izquierdo believes that there are a few things that should be fixed in the school system such as the way the students are viewed: “the fundamental way we think of children as students.”
Ms. Izquierdo says, “We should re-evaluate what we’re feeding the children, also I believe that lunch should be free for students.”
But there’s good to the bad. She finds the class schedule perfect and believes it should be untouched. She also believes that the way the class periods are arranged is perfectly distributed.
