This year at AGHS, there are numerous new staff members on campus. One of those is English teacher Stacia Arnold.

Arnold is not a native of the Central Coast and has only been here since June. She grew up in Orange County, in a small town called La Habra, but ventured beyond her hometown to continue her higher education. 

 ¨I went to San Diego for college and then I came back to LA for college and have been living in the LA/Long Beach area for the past 12 years up until this year,¨ Arnold said. 

At AGHS, Arnold teaches English 11. While she had originally studied to teach foreign languages, she switched to English due to a lack of opportunity. 

Outside the classroom, Arnold can be found pursuing her varying interests. Whether she’s at a punk concert, skydiving, or dirt biking, Arnold always loves to read.

Teaching is a job, and with every job comes challenges. Teaching is no exception. Arnold’s greatest challenge with teaching is grading. 

¨Overall grading. I hate grading,” Arnold laughed. “Especially with writing, it takes a long time and I have a pretty short attention span. I’m a big procrastinator, but it’s really important to grade because you have to keep track of progress so that you know what you need to reteach or focus on.¨ So yes folks, even teachers have stuff they hate about school. Shocking I know. 

Even though Arnold hates grading, her love of the subject matter and helping others keeps her going.  Ms. Arnold often volunteered at nonprofit services like tutoring students so she’s been a big help since the beginning. 

¨Once they had an education presented in a way that students could access it, how excited they got that was really exciting for me to help students get to that point,” Arnold said. “I really like that idea of helping students see their place in education and academics.¨ 

Arnold loves helping people, and teaching helps her do what she loves while getting paid. Talk about a win-win.

Arnold’s teaching philosophy is based on collaboration and student participation. 

“I think that you need to center students’ voices in the classroom to show them where their voices matter,” Arnold said. “A lot of my students…know things that I [knew] nothing about, so I think it needs to be a collaborative conversation with both teacher and student.”

A typical day in Arnold’s class involves many activities. At the moment students are learning how to analyze poems, write thesis statements, and analyze certain aspects of figurative language.  Students have been looking at model poems as a class while Arnold walks them through the poem and helps students deduce the main focus. After that, students move towards doing these assignments by themselves, thanks to Arnold’s help.

Thank you to Arnold for her time, and welcome to the Eagle family!