For Teacher Appreciation Week, May 4-8, USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin shadowed teachers and is sharing their stories with our readers.
Growing up, Josh Gonzalez would get into trouble – often because he finished his school assignments too fast.
Without work to do, he would grow bored and distract others. To keep him occupied, his fourth-grade teacher handed him an algebra textbook and told him to complete it. That eventually led him to help his peers with math and, in part, to a career in teaching.
Now a second-grade teacher at River Trail School of Agricultural Science, a Milwaukee Public School on the city’s northwest side, Gonzalez aims to keep his students engaged. His goal is to provide hands-on learning that connects the real world to the classroom. As a first-generation college graduate who grew up in the neighborhood, he hopes to inspire his students to dream big.
Gonzalez often draws on his own experiences to connect with students, telling them about his love for sports, his Puerto Rican heritage and his travels around the world. In his classroom, he displays a collage of images from places he’s traveled to, including the Taj Mahal in India and the Pyramids of Giza in Egypt. In August, he traveled on a 208-foot research vessel with scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration as part of its Teacher at Sea program.
“I enjoy teaching the kids things that will affect their lives,” he said. “I’m trying to inspire them to go out and see the world and make their own experiences. That keeps me coming back.”
On a sunny school day in April, he ushered his students outside to the school’s raised garden beds for a math lesson. At River Trail, teachers blend standard curriculum with agricultural science. Students help run compost programs, raise chickens and care for various plants in the school’s gardens and greenhouses.
Crouching down to measure the garden beds, students added and subtracted their results to determine how much space they had to grow different herbs and vegetables. Once inside, they tended to their hydroponically grown collard greens, harvesting the vegetables to take home to their families. Students also sowed seeds for future growing.
“It’s about helping the kids become more self-reliant, trying to end food deserts, to get them to eat healthy and fresh,” Gonzalez said. “We give them these new experiences because agriculture is important to all of us. We give them hands-on experiences that hopefully will stick with them as they become adults.”
The organization National Agriculture in the Classroom, part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, honored Gonzalez this year for using innovative agricultural lessons to teach core subjects. Gonzalez has long been passionate about the work. In recent years, he helped River Trail plant more than 120 fruit and nut trees, launching MPS’ first “food forest” in partnership with the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District. He often uses his breaks during the school day to apply for grants to expand River Trail’s agricultural offerings.
Beyond teaching, Gonzalez jokes that he takes on many roles.
“I play nurse, I play doctor, I play psychologist,” he said as he helped a student take off her coat at the beginning of a school day. “You have to wear a lot of different hats all the time.” When his students headed to gym class, he grabbed a screwdriver and fixed another teacher’s desk.
Each morning, students file into Gonzalez’s classroom, where he distributes breakfast through the district’s free meal program. After they eat together at their desks, he passes around leftovers for the students to take home. According to state data, 82% of students at River Trail are considered economically disadvantaged.
Some students carry trauma or struggle to focus. With each class, Gonzalez said, he must figure out “how to crack the code for each kid,” helping them realize their potential.
“A lot of them don’t have economic opportunities,” he said. “I want to open up a new world for these kids. We need them to learn and make better lives for themselves and for the community.”
With 20 years of experience working at River Trail, Gonzalez has become an expert in multitasking. During a small-group phonics session, he guided students in sounding out words while also scanning the room, redirecting those who appeared distracted. During a math lesson, he nudged a student falling asleep at her desk and sharpened another’s pencil – all while leading the second graders through their workbooks.
Gonzalez’s teaching philosophy focuses on establishing routines, keeping students busy and fostering a sense of mutual trust in the classroom. For one reading activity related to a book about outer space, students poked holes in paper cups and shined flashlights through them to create constellations. As they called out the different constellations they saw – a T-rex, a magic potion, a house, a kitty – Gonzalez rewarded their creativity and imagination.
In his classroom, a poster hangs on the wall showing a list of guidelines to follow. Among them: Be nice, have fun and – perhaps most importantly – treat everyone with respect.
“If you establish routines and procedures, kids know what to expect. But respect is No. 1,” he said. “We’re going to respect each other and care about each other, and we’re going to move forward together.”
It’s an experience Gonzalez didn’t always have as a student. Once, when a teacher told him he was so naughty he’d never graduate from high school, he replied, “Well, that’s alright. Then I’ll just be a teacher like you.”
Now he aims to engage students in ways he wished some of his teachers had. “I take the positive and negative and try to make it better for my students going forward,” he said.
After recess, Gonzalez read Judy Blume’s “Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing” to his second graders as they lounged together on the carpet to wind down. When his students behave well, he often tells them, “I’m such a lucky teacher!”
“I’m here for them,” he said. “I don’t try to look down at them or talk down at them, but I try to lift them up. Some of them you affect in ways that you didn’t know.”
Kayla Huynh covers K-12 education, teachers and solutions for the Journal Sentinel. Contact: khuynh@gannett.com. Follow her on X: @_kaylahuynh.
Kayla’s reporting is supported by Herb Kohl Philanthropies and reader contributions to the Journal Sentinel Community-Funded Journalism Project. Journal Sentinel editors maintain full editorial control over all content. To support this work, visit jsonline.com/support. Checks can be addressed to Local Media Foundation (memo: “JS Community Journalism”) and mailed to P.O. Box 85015, Chicago, IL 60689.
The JS Community-Funded Journalism Project is made possible through our partnership with Local Media Foundation, tax ID #36-4427750, a Section 501(c)(3) charitable trust affiliated with Local Media Association, and EnMotive, LLC, a subsidiary of USA TODAY Co., Inc. USA TODAY Co., Inc. is the parent company of this publication.
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: This MPS teacher was once an unruly student. Now he keeps kids engaged
Reporting by Kayla Huynh, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
