Professors at Mission Bay

Mission Bay High School is full of wonderful teachers, yet what most of us don’t know, is that we also have professors teaching here. Five well-known teachers at Mission Bay aren’t just teachers, but also professors. Those five are: Matt Moody, Gerardo Arteaga, Jorge Palacios, Erin Leszynski, and Ronald Lancia.

We at the Beachcomber decided to interview these professors in order to find out more about their life outside of high school and how they feel about teaching here. To start off our interviews, we decided to start with our amazing Journalism, American Literature, and 10th grade Seminar World Literature teacher, Matt Moody.

We asked him why he’s teaching here at Mission Bay when he could be teaching higher education at a college. Mr. Moody replied, “I chose to teach high school because, at this point in my career, it’s a lot more fun. I don’t intend to teach at the university level full time until I retire from teaching high school.” As for how he felt about teaching at Mission Bay, “After almost ten years teaching in PB, I’ve grown to realize that I’m one of the luckiest teachers in the United States, and it’s one of the best places to teach.” Regarding what it’s like to teach two different levels of students, both high school and graduate level for the University of Phoenix, he said, “I like teaching the graduate course, Instructional Methods for English Language Learners, because not only does it help my graduate students who are aspiring teachers, it also helps my students, many of whom are English language learners.”

We then decided to interview our Vice Principal, Erin Leszynski, with the same questions we asked Matt Moody. Regarding higher education, she said, “While I enjoy teaching students at the college level, my passion is working with young people who are still figuring out who they are and what they want to do with their lives. I especially feel good when I have helped to turn a student who was struggling around and help them to be successful in school.” After asking the second question, she replied “I am not a teacher at Mission Bay, but I enjoy my job as Vice Principal. I like this job as I get to do a lot of different things from counseling students to supporting teachers in becoming better educators. I get bored easily, so having new challenges all the time keeps me excited about the work I do.” Lastly, she left us shocked with her opinion on high school students and college students. She said, “In many ways, high school and college students are very similar. What I like about high school students is they’re not so ‘set in their ways’ and are usually more open to thinking in a different way or trying something new. Sometimes the college students think that they know it all already.”

After interviewing Ms. Erin Leszynski, we were wondering how our I.B. Spanish teacher, Mr. Arteaga felt about teaching here at Mission Bay High School when he could teach higher education. He said, “I can build bigger and stronger relationships with students and get to know the students as real people.” Then we asked him how does he feel teaching here at Mission Bay. He paused to think about his question and replied to it by saying, “I feel great, this is my sixth year teaching here and every year has been a great year teaching my I.B. students and non-I.B. Spanish students.” Now, we wanted his opinion on how he feels teaching two different groups of students. He said, “I feel great because I can teach my high school students what to expect from college and help them perform better at the college level. Most importantly, I teach my high school level courses as college level courses. Teaching college students is a different dynamic, and they tend to participate more.”

We weren’t able to interview the other two professors, Coach Palacios, who teaches Literature at a local university, and Mr. Lancia, who recently earned his doctorate from the University of San Diego, because Mr. Palacios is busy as our Athletic Director and Girls Soccer coach, and Dr. Lancia co-chairs the English department along with running our after-school program, ACES, and publishing our yearbook, not to mention I.B. Film. Here’s a shout-out to our professorial Mission Bay teachers and administrators!