Teaching During a Pandemic: An Interview with Ohio State Alum Tae Ruiz

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.

Once you get past the technical issues such as students opening a Google Docs, it gets easier. When students see you make mistakes and see that you are being vulnerable, it helps with community building. It becomes an environment where teachers are learning alongside their students.

Jessica Rivera: What are some ways in which you engage students in your online classes?

Tae Ruiz: I usually like to include dancing during my lessons. It’s a little awkward at first because parents can see what you are doing, but students really enjoy it. That’s one thing that is very different about teaching online: in the classroom, parents would have no idea what was going on, they would drop their child off and pick them up at the end of the day, but now they can watch your entire lesson. I also incorporate art lessons and we play games, and the counselor also does virtual visits to help students.

Jessica Rivera: Can you tell me more about the program you did over the summer?

Tae Ruiz: My best friend Jillian Deas works on campus in a program that supports student parents. She came up with the idea to do an online program over the summer as a way to help students transition into online learning. We knew that school in the fall would probably have an online component to it due to the pandemic, so we decided to do a trial run. It was an eight-week program from Monday through Thursday for two hours each day. We also made sure to use multicultural books that reflected various cultures, not just our own as a way to expose the students to diverse cultures.

Jessica Rivera: How did the program go overall?

Tae Ruiz: Things actually went better than we anticipated. I was initially apprehensive about online teaching. I didn’t know how I could teach via Zoom to a group of three-year-old kids. But it went great and it was a great way for students to socialize. We would dance during class, which I would do out on my porch. I’m sure my neighbors thought it was weird when they saw me dancing alone. We also had fun art lessons and gave copies of all of the books we read to each student. It was a way to help them build up their library at home. At the end of the program we did a graduation for students as well as a show and tell of students’ favorite art projects. Staff from the program drove to the students’ homes to distribute supplies and the kids decorated graduation caps. We ended the program with a dance party for all the students.

Tae Ruiz