Q1. When did you start teaching at Newington what has your time here been like?
I started teaching here just before covid broke out so that would have been In Australia in start of 2020. I came here as university student and did a program Newington had where I was able to be at the school for a whole year as an intern. I started there and now I’ve been here for almost 5 years which seems like a long time now that I think about it, but it’s gone so quickly. My time here has been great, learning so much from other teachers who are so talented like Ms Goldsmith, Mr Walsh and Ms Foster. It’s been such an awesome experience for me to be able to work with such wonderful people and enjoy doing it.
Q2. Being a Mentor, PDHPE Teacher and a Spanish Teacher is it difficult juggling the three subjects?
It is but because I love being able to express and share my culture and identity with Spanish and PDHPE is my passion being able to teach boys about mental health and wellbeing. I enjoy being a mentor because I enjoy being able to help the boys. I personally think it would have helped me a lot if I had a mentor at my high school and there were definitely times where it would have helped.
Q3. Touching on that second question has it ever been a challenge teaching in two languages, English and Spanish.
There has been, its almost like I have 2 personalities I have Mr Rivera and Señor Rivera. Because I’m completely different in my Spanish class compared to what I’m like in my PDHPE class. Sometimes some Spanish even slips out in PDHPE. So yeah, it can be.
Q4. What was your high schooling experience like and how does it compare to Newington?
I as a student I wasn’t a great student from Year 7 to 10. However, in saying that my final years of school were probably the most influential in my life. My teachers that I had for PE for English or Spanish. They really allowed me to understand that I if I put my mind to it I can learn anything and they also made learning very enjoyable for me ; so now I love learning. I’m going on tangent; your question was what was it like? It was very different. We only had one oval. We had one basketball court and we had an old gym equivalent but it was fine. I enjoyed it. We play football all the time at lunch. We played soccer handball which was insane like crazy we had with the green fluffy balls. Yeah, we used to play soccer handball with those like it was next level stuff. The teaching was good and I can’t really say anything bad about my education. I didn’t put enough effort in 7 to 10, but it was always the support and that was always there for me
Q5. Were you born here or overseas and how did you get introduced to the Spanish language
I was born in Ibarra, Ecuador which is a inland city. I moved to Australia with my family when I was three years old so I was only learning my first Spanish words when we moved. Which meant I had to quickly learn English. I couldn’t communicate in Spanish with everyone around me in preschool or primary school, so it was an interesting thing where I lost a lot of my Spanish. I also didn’t develop my Spanish a lot because I only speak English to the people around me. I could only speak Spanish to my family so I kind of like lost my identity or lost my language and through time as a teenager growing up and being connected back to my culture, I was able to learn how to speak Spanish fluently again.