By: MCKENNA ABBISS
Staff Writer
The well-known Mrs. Perez has been an English teacher here at EL Diamante High School for 16 years now. But even though she’s been here for a while, not a lot of people know what she did in order to get where she is today.
Before she came to this school, she actually went to Mt. Whitney for high school and three different colleges in order to receive her education. She started at UC Santa Barbara for her undergraduate, went to FPU for her teaching credential, and finally finished at Grand Canyon for her master’s degree. Out of all of these many schools, if you asked her, she would say going to UC Santa Barbara was the best part!
Before college, Mrs. Perez was almost positive that she wanted to become a journalist. Even when she was younger, she believed it was a perfect fit for her. But she soon discovered that the hours were not what she thought they were going to be and after incident after incident of sad things happening, Mrs. Perez decided that this job wasn’t the one for her.
After all of that, Mrs. Perez was asked to substitute for one of the teachers at Divisadero. Despite the difficulties of being a new teacher, she did not quit and discovered that this job was the right one for her.
Mrs. Perez didn’t stop there, though. After teaching there for the rest of the school year, she started to teach 8th graders in Dinuba, taught at Mount Whitney for 5 years, and finally ended up at El Diamante High School where she has now been for 16 years.
It has now been 25 years since Mrs. Perez started in the education business and she still continues to love what she does.
Although it does come with a lot of work, when Mrs. Perez is not grading papers, she loves to travel with Mr. Perez, read, watch Netflix, and listen to murder podcasts. On top of this, she loves to run and even enjoys doing marathons and ½ marathons.
She is married to Mr. Perez who also teaches here at El Diamante and has two kids, Jenna who is 22, and Jack who is 23.
If you were to ask her, Mrs. Perez would say that she loves El Diamante because of the students here on campus, the block schedule, and that it has the best English Department in the state.
Mrs. Perez wants all the students and staff here at El Diamante to know that Visalia is a very small part of this world, so the best thing we can do is to go out and see the world outside of our little town.