When World History teacher Kendall Gomez graduated from Bishop McGuinness in 2014, she didn’t think she’d return to the school. Now, she’s back as a teacher for history and current events.
When she went to college, she didn’t originally have teaching in mind.
“At first, I thought I wanted to be a school counselor,” Gomez said. “And then as I was looking into that, I realized that most school counselors need certification to teach in schools. So after that, I started looking forward to the education track in college and stuck with it.”
After graduating from Westminster College in Missouri, she taught at a Catholic high school in Jefferson City, the state’s capital. Then, she moved back to Oklahoma and taught at Harding Charter Prep School for a few years.
“Harding was different from McGuinness, but there’s a lot of students that I was able to make good relationships with,” Gomez said. “I still coach volleyball at Harding. So I teach at McGuinness and then, during the volleyball season, I drive up to coach so I’m still able to keep a lot of those relationships that I’ve made with my players.”
On top of keeping up with coaching at another school, Gomez has had to learn to teach new classes like her current events class.
With her new class, Gomez said she wanted it to be less structured, letting students focus on aspects of the modern world that interest them. She wanted the students to be able to learn on their own level, applying the concepts learned in class.
“It’s just getting you guys to look at different events and do your own research and give you tools and tips and tricks to do that because your idea of what’s interesting in current events could be different from somebody else’s idea of what’s interesting in current events,” Gomez said.
Gomez is glad to be back at her alma mater, working with people who were once her teachers.
“It’s nice to already have some kind of background with them and to be able to have a different relationship, and it just felt like the right place for me to be,” Gomez said. “I was comfortable with it because I have gone here. It just made sense. It felt like I was coming home.”
