Buenas tardes clase

Oops wrong class 

Good afternoon class 

Spanish and government teacher Alicia Jones has been teaching for 28 years.

Jones grew up in a small town in southeast Missouri. 

“They did not offer Spanish in 1989 when I started high school,” Jones said. “It was just French. By the time I was a senior, they started offering Spanish, but I already had my two years, so I didn’t feel like I needed to take it.” 

Jones started the first 10 years of her career in Nashville. Her main goal was to go to University to become a social studies teacher to continue her love of knowledge.

To get her bachelor’s, Jones needed to choose between 15 hours of a foreign language or calculus. 

“I felt like I needed to switch because I didn’t really remember much French, so I started over with Spanish,” Jones said. “I kind of fell in love with it.”

Soon after getting her certification, Jones had the option to broaden her abilities. 

“The person at the university told me that I had enough hours to also get certified in Spanish,” Jones said. “My major was political science, and I ended up studying comparative politics, which is where you look at the governments of other countries. I focused on Latin America, so it kind of made sense to keep the Spanish.”

Soon after Jones used both skills of knowledge. 

“When I started out, I was teaching the U.S. government and Spanish one.”

Jones switched schools in Nashville and had the opportunity to teach a higher-level Spanish. 

In 2008, she moved to Shawnee Mission Northwest and started in Spanish one and two.

  After a few more years of just teaching a language, she taught the Modern World History class along with Spanish three. 

Eventually, Jones went back to just being a language teacher until last year, when she was given the financial literacy class due to a drop in enrollment for Spanish. 

“Shawnee Mission has required financial literacy for quite some time,” Jones said. “Because they made that requirement on schools, the state loosened the requirements on who can teach it, and they allowed people that are certified in social studies to teach it.”

Jones had been put into the class last minute but managed to be engaged with her teaching within the curriculum. 

“It was a very practical class,” Jones said. “I’ve had life experience with many of the topics, but I’ve never tried to explain it to anyone.
Like an amortization chart on a mortgage. Like, I know what that is, but how do you explain that?
I’ve done taxes, but how do you explain that?” 

While teaching financial literacy only lasted one year, Jones was put into the American Government this year. 

“I can literally sit here and talk about it for hours; that was my degree, that was my interest,” Jones said. “I taught it for 10 years before. I like to read about history, and current events are interesting to me. I have a bigger comfort level with government.”

Even with minimal time to prepare for the school year, Jones had benefitted from the help of peers.

“Miss Lamori is another government teacher and she’s been doing this for her whole career,” Jones said. “There is a curriculum guide to know these are our goals for the year and taking those and dividing them into units. With financial literacy, it was the same thing.” 

Jones has been at Northwest for 17 years, even with being thrown new challenges in her career her love for it hasn’t stopped. 

“I really enjoy working with young people and I like to make it a personalized experience for the students,” Jones said.
”Especially with the main, required classes, like government, financial literacy, because I’m not going to stand between you and your diploma.”