By Rebecca Lopez Some only know Ms. Barrett as the vice principal at KSJC, but what they don't know is that there is a lot of interesting things about her. Ms. Barrett grew up in a small town of Charlotte, Michigan. Growing up in the countryside, Ms. Barrett was raised on a farm with her younger sister and a close-knit community. Looking back on her high school experience, Ms. Barrett wished she had known how much people consider face value, which is the way that you present yourself as a person. In high school, Ms. Barrett was a shy girl in, but also a very studious teen and ended up being the valedictorian of her graduating class. She was all about her studies, and was very involved with school all around. She played volleyball and softball, was involved in many clubs, and took piano lessons. On top of all of this Ms. Barrett also worked during high school; she began working her sophomore year at the library. As a teen, Ms. Barrett wanted to be a pediatrician, but her plans changed when she entered college. Ms. Barrett went to the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, which wasn't her initial choice. However, since it was only a little over an hour from her hometown, she decided to attend it. Once there, Ms. Barrett decided to major in English and Spanish, then added secondary education after she decided to be a teacher. During college, Ms. Barrett had the opportunity to study abroad in Salamanca, Spain, which was an exciting experience since she just started learning Spanish. In college, her life-changing moment was meeting people from different backgrounds that she wasn't used to and got to experience new sides of life. Another life changing experience was teaching at Detroit high schools, which led to her passion for teaching. However, Ms. Barrett didn’t want to teach just anywhere; she wanted to teach in low-income communities. After college, Ms. Barrett moved to Houston, Texas and worked at a traditional public high school that was extremely diverse. The students at this high school came from 70 different countries and spoke 40 different languages, so you can imagine how much Ms. Barrett learned from this experience. She went on to explain that some students had never even been in a classroom. Because of this, some classes consisted of teaching 17-18 year-old students how to sit in a desk and hold a pencil. After three years at this Houston high school, Ms. Barrett moved to San Jose to teach at KIPP San Jose Collegiate. After working at KIPP for 7 years, Ms. Barrett realized that like anything else, teaching gets easier with time. During her first years teaching, Ms. Barrett would go into work on saturdays and work from 8am-4pm and do the same on sundays at home. As she continued working at KSJC, she noticed it became easier to do. After teaching at KIPP for a while, she realized that there's no other place that would have such passionate teachers and amazing students as well. Ms. Barrett actually created a new class, Topics in American Culture because she wanted to offer another class to students that did not have to be an AP class. With this class, she wants students to get to learn about topics that they are actually interested in. The fact that Ms. Barrett gets to be Vice Principal and teach at the same time is incredible to her since most vice principals don't get to teach. Ms. Barrett is a valued member of our school and we’re excited to see where life takes her.
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