Student Profiles

Student Profiles
Student Profile Archive

Carlos Rios '12

Carlos Rios '12What drew me to studying education and teaching began in high school for me. I was in a program called the Academic Success Program that encouraged students, with the majority of them being underrepresented minority students that would be the first in their families to attend college, to attend out-of-state colleges with most of them even going on to some of the most prestigious schools in the country. When I became an upperclassmen in high school, I began to have the opportunity to be a mentor to the underclassmen in the program helping them with their homework. Also during school breaks, I would be a student-teacher to the students, leading a classroom and teaching the SAT test and exposing its style to the students while also helping them approach some of the more difficult questions in the test. When I think about my experiences in the program, I believe it was those initial experiences as a student-teacher that helped me discover how much teaching and educating students became a passion for me, something that I really enjoyed and loved to do.

All of my education courses have inspired me. When I first took Professor Dorn's Education 101 class, I felt exposed to the many aspects of the education system and the current debates within it. I feel like the course established and solidified my interest in the field. I also took Professor Byrnes' 'Educating All Students' course and really enjoyed it because of its concentration on students in the classroom and looking at some of the potential problems or issues that both students and educators face in the classroom. Also, Mariana Cruz's 'Latinos/Latinas in the U.S.' course was very interesting to me because of its focus on Latinos and the many issues Latinos face in the U.S in the contexts of education, politics, identity and power. I would like to use everything I learn in the education department in the future to contribute to the advancements that America's education system can make in the future.

Because I am a Spanish major, I am hoping to go abroad in the spring semester of my junior year to Chile. With this experience, I really hope to solidify my speaking, listening and writing skills of the Spanish language and see the lifestyle of Chileans. In an educational context, it would be wonderful for me to see Chile's educational system and where it has come from and possibly make a comparison between the educational system of Chile and the United States.

With my degree, I hope to study education further in graduate school to possibly become a professor or hold a leadership position within a school district.