Career Path of a Charter School Principal at a Charter Middle School
Alma's career path began with observing "students of my background struggling academically" at Yale, leading to involvement with Teach for America. This experience, along with founding a charter middle school in South Los Angeles and progressing to principal, showcases a commitment to improving educational outcomes for underrepresented students.
Education, Charter Schools, Teach for America, Leadership, Educational Administration
Advizer Information
Name
Job Title
Company
Undergrad
Grad Programs
Majors
Industries
Job Functions
Traits
Alma Zepeda
Charter School Principal and Administrator
Middle School
Yale College 2012
Johns Hopkins School of Education, MS in Elementary Education, 2015
Political Science, American Studies
Education
Operations and Project Management
International Student, Took Out Loans
Video Highlights
1. Alma's involvement in cultural house at Yale showed her the academic struggles of Hispanic students, sparking her interest in education.
2. Her experience with Teach for America (TFA) solidified her interest in education by focusing on the underperformance of high-performing minority students in college.
3. Alma's journey from a fourth-grade bilingual teacher to co-founding a charter middle school and eventually becoming its principal showcases the variety of career paths within education administration.
Transcript
Could you walk me through your career path, starting with your experiences in college and any internships or jobs you've had before your current role?
Of course. So, I was an undergraduate at Yale College in New Haven. During my time at Yale, I got really involved in the cultural house.
I got to see many students of my background, Hispanic background, struggling academically, culturally, and socially. But really, academics is what I focused on. We had some of the lowest GPAs on campus while I was there.
I started to wonder why we were so underprepared for our experiences at Yale. During my junior year, I was recruited to go to Teach for America's 20th-year summit in Washington D.C. I just fell in love with the rhetoric of TFA.
They had a lot of studies about why high-performing students were underperforming in college, specifically for minority backgrounds. That's something that really interested me then, and it's something I still see now, unfortunately.
Those experiences of seeing my peers and myself struggling in college, seeing this amazing organization, Teach for America, trying to solve that, really got me interested in education. So, I ended up recruiting with Teach for America and became a corps member upon graduation.
I went to the Houston corps and loved my time in Houston. We learned a lot. I was a fourth-grade bilingual teacher in math, and then fifth grade. I ended up doing three years there.
I came back to Los Angeles wanting to continue in education, but now in my childhood neighborhood. I found an opportunity with a group of educators to co-found a charter middle school in South Los Angeles. I worked there for seven years.
I went from teaching there as a founder to administration as a director of operations and principal, essentially. Then, finally, as a principal in my last year.
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