Paul Hernandez is a beloved and heart warming teacher here at Ridgeview, however his hyper and outgoing personality has had its struggles to get him to where he is today, with having to deal with being expelled from school a month before graduating his senior year.
For most the key to being successful in life is graduating high school. Hernandez at the time was struggling with showing up to classes, and overall wouldn’t enjoy being in school. Hernandez describes this as a time where, “school was just something I didn’t make a priority.” Not being provided with a stable support system from his teachers, where instead they were more content with Hernandez not showing up to class. This would then lead to him cutting class with peers who would do the same thing and not take school seriously. It was a month before graduation when Hernandez was ultimately expelled from school.
Hernandez’s expulsion was his turning point, him realizing that cutting class and receiving bad grades wasn’t going to get him far in life and he wanted to change. “The second time I got expelled I was a month away from graduation and the look on my mom’s face was tough to see because I knew instantly I let her down,” getting expelled weighed heavily on him. Hernandez’s mindset had a big impact once he realized he would not be able to celebrate graduation with his classmates. That harsh reality had a significant impact on his perspective, leading to him wanting to become better.
Although the road ahead of him wasn’t gonna be easy, Hernandez made a plan to make things better. Continuation school was the next step for Hernandez, “I knew I wanted to graduate high school, and I knew it was important for me to graduate so lucky for me being in the continuation school walked me through everything and put everything together for me.” What got him through the tough times were his parents giving him the most amazing support system he could have, “them not giving up on me despite me making a lot of mistakes.” He was able to graduate from the continuation school and begin going to college, where he got into this profession to be a type of teacher he never had, who could make him steer onto the right path, “not that I wouldn’t have made any mistakes but it would’ve helped minimize it.”
As a result of what Hernandez went through shapes who he is today and helped him better understand students as a teacher. Working with youth and watching them to go into the next phase in life and being understanding of the fact that they are still teenagers and they make mistakes and there’s things that he can learn from the students is what he enjoys about being a teacher.
