ASU Alum teaching world history at local high school
Andrew “Andy” Cruz is a recent ASU alum, having earned two bachelor’s degrees in history and in classical civilizations, and a teaching certificate with a focus in secondary education.
He is now a world history teacher at Highland High School, which is his first job out of college.
He found entering the workforce to be a lot easier than initially expected.
“It was surprisingly painless,” Cruz said. “I came into the education pathway a lot later than most, so I was very worried that it would be a huge shock to go from my one year of certification into a classroom full of sophomores. However, I’ve had little to no problems so far in the job and I continue to love it more and more each day that I spend in the classroom.”
Cruz found the connections he made while at ASU to be invaluable in his job hunt, leaving him to feel deeply lucky and thankful to have had them. His professors and mentor teachers in particular helped him a lot along the way.
“They offered an incredible amount of help, sending me links to applications for schools looking for a world history teacher, and by walking me through the application process and what I should expect from the interviewing process,” he said.
Not only did his ASU connections help him land his current position, they also continue to help him feel prepared for the day-to-day of his career as he’s still starting out.
“My professors at ASU really helped me to settle into the expectations for my first year as a teacher,” Cruz said. They provided an incredible amount of insight into ways to easily keep up with the workload of creating lesson plans for the first time and how to avoid stress.”
Cruz wished to impart a piece of advice to those who are beginning their post-grad job hunt.
“Reach out to people you know that might be in the same line of work that you’re interested in. The amount of experience they have is invaluable, and if you can manage to run some practice ‘interviews’ with them, you’ll be much more prepared for the real thing.”