As of this summer, faculty members Señora Guirao, Mr. Taylor, Ms. Powell-Thomas, Mr. Luoma, Ms. Moonsamy, and Ms. Johnson will be departing from their roles at Oakland Tech. All of these teachers have made various contributions to Tech and have learned and grown as people throughout their careers.
Señora Guirao, affectionately called Ms. G by her students, came to OUSD in 2001 as a part of a California Department of Education initiative to recruit Spanish teachers from Spain and Mexico. By that point, she had already worked as a news reporter and an English and Spanish literature teacher in Barcelona.
She started teaching at Fremont High School, where she encountered several culture shocks.
“For example, the students were asking me in class what I had for lunch,” she recalled. “Students would never, never, never ask such personal questions in Spain to the teacher.”
However, Fremont’s large Latino student population aided this transition. She mentioned that she was “very attached to the Latino population there because there are a lot of things in common.”
Eventually, after many of her colleagues retired, she transferred to Oakland Tech in 2012. Over her past fourteen years at Tech, she has formed many good memories. One of Ms. G’s favorite experiences was seeing her students grow up and achieve their goals.
After she retires, Ms. G plans on returning to Spain so she can live closer to her family. She also hopes to cross off some destinations on her travel bucket list and spend more time in nature.
Another teacher planning to leave is Mr. Taylor, who teaches statistics and geometry. He has been at Oakland Tech since 2017, but he has been teaching on and off for most of his career.
“I had never considered being a teacher, and I liked working with computers and being a systems person, and I had a pretty good job,” Mr. Taylor recalled. “But I also was like, this is not the most fulfilling thing in the world, and what else would I want to do? And I spent a long time thinking about it, and somehow teaching came up on the radar.”
Next year, Mr. Taylor plans to take a year off and go to Italy with his wife. There, he plans to strengthen his Italian, explore the south of Italy, and play the piano.
Though Mr. Taylor plans on returning to OUSD next year, there may not be an available spot.
Ms. Moonsamy, the current Computer Science Academy counselor, came to the United States to become a teacher. She’s worked as a counselor in OUSD for 28 years. Ms. Moonsamy started her counseling career at Fremont High School, where she worked for 17 years before coming to Tech.
Ms. Moonsamy highlighted that her move to Oakland Tech was a special change in her workspace. Students would come up and welcome her, which made her “feel comfortable and accepted here.”
Ms. Moonsamy expressed that she’ll miss her meaningful relationships with the counseling team, students, and their families. However, she looks forward to many things in her years beyond Tech, such as traveling and spending time with her family.
Growing up in South Africa, a place with limited resources for High School Students, Ms. Moosamy encourages students to take advantage of resources like the College and Career Center and Counseling.
“It’s good for students to remember that if they take advantage of their opportunities, they do well, the sky is the limit!”
The contributions of the retiring faculty will be cherished by the Oakland Tech community, and we wish them the best of times in their next chapters.