On the northeast side of San Antonio, through the front doors of Rawlinson Middle School and tucked at the end of a long hallway, an eighth grade U.S. History classroom spins with activity. It’s a Friday afternoon, long after the final bell has rung, but history teacher Jennifer Vasquez continues to help students.
One child sits at a desk finishing a makeup test while Vasquez goes in and out of the classroom talking to other staff members about a project that will go up on the walls outside their pod of classrooms.
“As soon as I finish in here, I’ll be back out to help,” she says walking back to her classroom. “We’ll have to be quiet a few minutes while she finishes her test,” she instructs me as a student continues writing.
Covering the walls are posters, projects and fun visuals. Her classroom takes students back in time surrounding them with historical moments.
“I like to make things interactive for the students too,” Vasquez said. “I want to get them up and moving.”
A 2009 graduate of Texas A&M University-San Antonio, Vasquez won awards for the 2013 Rawlinson Teacher of the Year and the 2014 Kens5 ExCEL Award.
A magnetic personality, she’s clearly a favorite among her students who see an infinite amount of energy packed into her petite frame.
Jennifer and her achievements are my focus during my visit to Northside Independent School District but she treats me like one of her students wanting to know how I see my future. Students always come first with Vasquez.
She started her educational journey at A&M-San Antonio prior to when construction began on the permanent campus on the South Side of San Antonio. Classes were held at the makeshift Gillette Campus, a former elementary school leased by the university to help gain a foothold on the South Side.
“We were literally in the middle of an elementary school. It’s changed a lot. It’s grown so rapidly,” she said of Texas A&M-San Antonio.
Vasquez did not originally enter college planning to major in education.
“I originally started out doing psychology, and although it is very interesting to me it just seemed like a very long road,” Vasquez said. “I actually ended up getting a job as an instructional assistant here at Rawlinson as I was still going through school.”
It was during that time though that she developed a love for teaching.
“I just fell in love with the kids,” she said. “I just loved being around kids and being able to pour into them every day.”
Vasquez did not immediately focus on history when she began at Rawlinson Middle School. She originally worked with Special Education students who had profound needs. After her first year, she moved into an instructional assistant position in a history class.
“I just absolutely loved it,” Vasquez said. “I’ve always loved history, but I worked especially with Mr. Bender who is my teacher next door. He was my mentor and I just fell in love with just how interactive it was.”
Jon Bender, an eighth grade teacher at Rawlinson, continues to act as her mentor as needed. He speaks highly of the teaching style she developed through the years.
“Mrs. Vasquez uses every learning style while teaching core subject information: tactile, auditory, visual and so on,” Bender said. “Using this technique, she strengthens the student’s ability to be successful in social studies.”
Vasquez said the ability to connect the past with students’ lives in the present attracts her to the teaching of history.
“The connections blow their minds. They have no idea they can relate to something that happened in the 1700s,” she said.
The classroom transformed Vasquez. She switched her major again to allow her to move more fully into teaching and career development.
She made the leap from psychology to education and adds to it a deep love for teaching history. Vasquez realized that she could not see herself doing anything else.
Vasquez shares qualities with other non-traditional students at this university. She began at the University of Texas at San Antonio, transferred to Palo Alto College, then Northwest Vista College and then Wayland Baptist University before finally completing her bachelor’s degree at A&M-San Antonio.
“I kind of tried everything,” Vasquez said.
But even through all the transfers, Vasquez still managed to graduate in just five years.
For Vasquez, the degree plan offerings were a good fit, and it helped that the university accepted her transfer hours. She said that the flexibility and evening classes were especially conducive to her full-time job at the school.
During her time at A&M-San Antonio, Vasquez came to appreciate the lessons she received from William Bush, department chair of humanities and social sciences.
“He was the professor for the majority of my history classes,” Vasquez said. “He really instilled a love for history in me and I try to do that with my students. He gave me a passion for history,” she said.
Bender’s fondest moment of Vasquez is a direct reflection of her shared mission with Bush to instill a passion for history into every student.
“My most favorite is when she acts out the Pocahontas story for her students while studying Jamestown,” Bender said. “Mrs. Vasquez will stand up on the desk acting out the Pocahontas story from the Disney movie.”
After several years of teaching, Vasquez realized there is a lot that her textbooks did not prepare her for, and sometimes teaching just comes down to responding to each individual situation. She said her ability to engage her students helps her build strong and productive relationships, and effectiveness as a teacher.
“I feel like you can really make a difference in their life at this point,” Vasquez said. “I just decided that this is where I wanted to be.”
