Applicant

My Name is Ulises Alejandro Gonzalez-Gonzalez, though I have students call me Mr.

Gonzalez to keep it simple. This is my third-year teaching. I am a secondary Education Teacher

with certificates in History, Math and Physics, and while in college I worked as a math and

science tutor at Primavera Online High School, so I have had a decent amount of experience

when it comes to dealing with these standards. I currently work at Rhodes Junior High School. I

have personally always believed that the relationship that a student forms with the educators in

his life can lead to life-long growth in said individual. This applied to my time as an online tutor

especially well, as I would have one on one interactions with my students on a near daily basis,

giving them the tools they need to succeed in their education on their own, while also leaving the

door open for the to come to me if they had any questions, comments, concerns or just daily

issues to talk about. The school’s demographic breakdown goes as follows: 58% Hispanic, 26%

Caucasian with the rest of the student coming from various ethnic groups. A majority of the

school lives in a low-income house hold at 76%.

Project based learning has been my preferred way of learning ever since I had my

internship at Rhodes Junior High School, a school where 80% of the student’s grades come from

projects that they do in class. The students were always doing engaging work when I went to the

school, and it made me wish that I could have had that kind of experience in middle school.

Giving students the ability to build things, be it physically or in writing, that are their own

creation brought a sense of satisfaction to many of the students I talked to.

Having worked at an online high school that had thousands of students enrolled at a time,

I would consider myself well versed in various educational technologies. In particular, I have had

a lot of experience with Canvas’s Learning Management System and Adobe Connect, a virtual
classroom application that allows students and teachers to connect with each other remotely and

work on assignments collaboratively through screen sharing, all while recording the session for

future reference. In the past, I have used these systems to make relevant, standards based

resources for students that I provide in video form, allowing them to reference the video

whenever they want to. In a brick and mortar environment, I have helped students work through

their work in various Learning Management Systems, from Blackboard, to Summit Learning. At

times, students simply needed help understanding the wording of different objects in their

checkpoints, where as other times they had a complete misunderstanding of how these systems

functioned, leaving them confused as to what they could realistically do and still earn credit on.

Currently at Rhodes Junior High, I see a lack of understanding of personal finances and

budgeting amongst the students, Many of them are willing to spend a lot of money on things that

they don’t really need. This happens between the students, but also outside of school, with many

students coming in telling me that they spent their money on snacks. Because of this, I believe

that incorporating a project about building a budget would be beneficial to the students in our

school. As a title one school, many of our students come from underprivileged backgrounds,

with education being their primary hope to improve their quality of life. I believe this project

should take place across both the math and social studies classes, with students seeing the

importance of civic engagement through taxes and economics in their social studies class, while

also understanding the percentages of their income that should be spent on different necessities

and wants. In their social studies class, we could also cover how different levels of education

tend to correlate with higher salaries, and the importance of schooling as they plan for their

futures as rising adults. I believe this project would be great for eighth graders as preparation for

the more independant world they will be going into in and after high school. We could have
students pick a profession they are interested in, and do research about how much those

professions make to help them relate it to their future, giving them a chance to truly understand

themselves and the role they play in the local, national and global economies.