TEACHING DURING A PANDEMIC: AN INTERVIEW WITH OHIO STATE ALUM TAE RUIZ By Jessica Rivera
According to the 2018-19 statistics from the Ohio department of Education, Latinx students made up 6.1 percent of all K-12 students in Ohio. However, teaching staff in Ohio schools is significantly less diverse, with less than 1% of teachers (0.68%) in Ohio identifying as Latinx. Recently, I had the opportunity to talk with Tae Ruiz, a recent graduate of OSU who shared her experience as an TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) teacher in the Columbus area. This summer, Tae worked with her best friend Jillian Deas, who organized a summer program to help students with the summer slide. During our conversation, Tae spoke with me about her journey into teaching as well as how her role as a teacher has changed during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Jessica Rivera: How did you choose teaching as a profession? Tae Ruiz: I came into OSU exploring. I graduated from high school and no one in my family had gone to college, so I really didn’t know what to expect. During high school, I didn’t even know how to apply to college. I have family members that attended college in Puerto Rico, but no one had attended college here in the states. It was really my college counselor in high school that helped me apply to college. They even provided me with a mentor who worked with me throughout the 4 years I was at OSU. During my first year, I was initially interested in art, since my high school had provided me with a rich art experience. Even though it was a lower-resourced school they always provided us with opportunities to express our creativity. So that seemed like a good fit for a major. However, after talking with my academic advisor at OSU, they encouraged me to consider teaching as a career. Initially I wasn’t convinced, but after taking an introductory education course my first semester of college, I changed my mind. Jessica Rivera: What made you decide to be a TESOL teacher? Tae Ruiz: I initially went to a bilingual K-12 school in Cleveland up to the third grade, but then we moved, and I was enrolled in an English only school. Increasingly, I stopped using Spanish at home except when I would talk with my grandparents. When I completely lost my Spanish, my mom decided to move us back to Puerto Rico. There, I entered the school system as a newcomer, having to learn Spanish all over again. People questioned whether I was Puerto Rican because I didn’t speak Spanish. I was often alienated and othered at school. I felt as though in Puerto Rico, I was not Puerto Rican enough and, in the U.S., I was not American enough. Because there wasn’t a large Latinx community at OSU, it made me embrace my identity more. Choosing to be a TESOL teacher connected me with my personal experience living in the U.S and Puerto Rico. I also really love learning languages. I even learned American Sign language during my time at OSU. Being a TESOL teacher is a way for me to build on my Spanish skills and keep my heritage. I’ve also had an opportunity to learn about the diversity of the Spanish language, since many of my students are not Puerto Rican. Jessica Rivera: What has life been like as a teacher teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic? Tae Ruiz: Teaching via Zoom is initially very intimidating. I’m very big on having face-to-face interactions. When you take away the physical space to make connections, you have to be creative in finding ways to build community.
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