June 29th 2011
Math teacher taught lots more than math
Photo by Carlos Chavez // Buy this photo
Manuel Valdez, a math teacher at Thousand Oaks High School, is retiring. Valdez is known for encouraging students to go to college.
For years, Manuel Valdez has been encouraging students to go to college, especially those who come from a background like his own. He regularly stays in his classroom long after school is over, tutoring students struggling with algebra, asking them what they want to do with their lives.
“I’m really concerned about the Latino kids,” said Valdez, 62, a math teacher at Thousand Oaks High School. “A lot of them don’t come from families who understand higher education. It’s not that they don’t want their child to go; they don’t understand what it takes.”
Valdez, who suffered a stroke in January, is retiring this month after 38 years of teaching at Thousand Oaks High. In addition to teaching math and some U.S. history in his early years, he has coached wrestling. It was at a wrestling tournament that he had his stroke.
He’s not pretending to care. He’s legitimately interested in the futures of his students.
Giselle Quezada
Valdez is quiet and humble in his work, but he’s had a significant impact as a teacher, coach and adviser to the Latino Connection student club, said Kerry Lyne, a history teacher who coaches with him.
Valdez demonstrated his commitment to students and teaching when he returned to the classroom about six weeks after his stroke, wanting to finish his career on his own terms, Lyne said.
“He’s got generations of students he’s touched,” Lyne said. “Some of them are straight-A kids who went to Stanford. Some were on the margin, and he helped them.”
Giselle Quezada, 17, believes that without Valdez, she might not have been accepted to the University of Chicago and other top universities, including Stanford. Quezada, whose mother came here from Mexico, will be the first person in her family to go to college, she said.
“He’s not pretending to care,” she said. “He’s legitimately interested in the futures of his students.”
You can see that in the photos of students that cover several of his classroom walls. On another wall, he has encouraged students to write out the numbers from one to 10 in their native languages. Their contributions include Greek, Vietnamese, Chinese, Farsi, Arabic, Hindi, Dutch and Portuguese.
Anna Diaz, 16, has spent a lot of time in that classroom, getting extra help in algebra. She took algebra II with Valdez, and he went to both her confirmation and quinceañera.
“He’s always pushing me on my grades,” Diaz said. “I call him Grampa sometimes. … He’s touched so many people’s lives.”
Valdez grew up as the son of migrant workers from Mexico who had a third-grade education and moved from job to job. His parents wanted their children — seven boys — to go to college but didn’t have the means to help them, he said.
When he was still a kid, Valdez went to live with his godparents in El Monte, visiting his parents over the summer. It was a wrestling coach who encouraged him to go to college. He went to community college, then to UC Santa Barbara, where he majored in history and minored in math.
“I suppose that’s one of the reasons I wanted to be a teacher,” he said. “I believe no one gets to where they (are) on their own. They may think they do, but they don’t.”
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Tags: Math, Math Teacher
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