Q + A: Spanish teacher Nisla Fonseca
Mrs. Fonseca instructs students on Spanish.
February 14, 2014
Now in her 38th year at Tracy High School, Nisla Fonseca loves teaching Spanish to high school students. As a young girl, she enjoyed playing school, but only wanted to play if she could play the part of the teacher. Fonseca loves interacting with students, impacting them for years to come.
What is your favorite word? “Mijo. It’s a term of endearment that usually parents use with their children. I tend to use it with these kids. They kind of walk around emulating that sometimes.”
What is the most touching moment in your teaching career? “I think there’s several. I have had many students at this point in time now that I have had their kids graduate and it has been really touching to know that I made a difference in both the parents and the child. The parents actually have a hard time saying my first name, which was Miss Cornelius.”
What is your favorite hobby? “I love to dance. It really doesn’t matter what type of dance. I do a lot more Hispanic dances. I have my own dance group here within school. Outside of school, I go to the gym and dance there. I also used to go to dance class in San Francisco. I had a choreographer friend there who would do choreography for Snoop Dogg, Beyonce, and Shakira.”
What is the funniest moment in your teaching career? “There’s at least one a year. The funniest moments have been when the kids do their karaoke. It’s just that they dance and sing and try to look the part, and I have just had some really funny ones and some really good ones. In fact, some of the kids from college recently brought back some friends from college to watch their videos.”
What brings you the most joy? “My own children. My daughter is kind of following in the same footsteps in teaching but with coaching and dance and PE in mind—sports pedagogy. My son—just in the fact that it’s finally hit him that he’s a lot like his mother. He’s always trying to go a little further, not to put up with nonsense with people, be very independent, learning as much as he can about all kinds of different things. They’re 23 and 25, but they’re still pretty much homebodies. We still always get together.”
What are some musical qualities of language? “It all is phonetic. If you get a student who enjoys music you can always do a lot of songs to pique their interests—put it to music with rhymes and riddles. They would have to learn the vocab and sounds of letters and words.”
What are three adjectives you would use to describe yourself? “Friendly, talkative, energetic.”
If you could talk to any person for an hour, who would it be? What would you talk about? “It’s two different things. I think one would be my grandfather. He passed away and I wasn’t able to see him. I was pregnant at the time, and they would not let me fly. If I were able to talk to him, I’d ask for advice on things I didn’t get a chance to talk to him about—that would be good. For fun, I would like to talk to maybe Brad Pitt. It would be because he’s considered such a good looking man, yet I want to know why he has chosen to take up such a family situation in his life. He does movies but he has children, he’s adopted children. I want to know why he sees his life as two separate entities.”
What was a life-changing event in your life that still influences you today? “Becoming a U.S. citizen. It’s influenced me a lot because I had to go through different steps as opposed to those a lot of the kids go through now. It makes me see what the kids have gone through and how I can help them. I mainly help them know the language. I have taught adult school in ESL (English as a second language) at San Joaquin Delta College.”
What is culture? “To me, culture is all of the traditions that your family has had through the years that are instilling in the younger generation a way of life, a way that the old folks used to be. That is all dying. There’s so many kids now that no longer see it as ‘I have to do that.’ Now it’s ‘just food,’ no longer behavior or patterns of moral, like young girls not being able to date or having a chaperone with you.”
Do you like the changes in culture? “I think it’s had to change. I was a very rebellious child when I was in college. Therefore, I knew things would be changing. I was one of those that had the first set of co-ed dorms and we were on house council and there was Kent State [shootings] and the riots there. I knew that things would have to change. Now, should we teach our children about the old times? I think so. I think they need to know what the culture’s been like and what parts they like and what parts they don’t like.”
What is the most spontaneous thing you have ever done? “It probably has to do with dance. I have picked up things like dancing at the rally and dancing at homecoming and dancing at Lip Sync and dancing for Snoop Dogg. I have done other dances elsewhere where it’s like ‘whoa, I don’t think I’d ever pick that up.’”
What is the nicest thing anyone has ever done for you? “Every year I’m always amazed at the number of stuff from my students who send me cards of thanks for the years that I have had class, considering that some of them have said that I’m too hard or too mean. But at the end it’s ‘thank you for all that you’ve taught me.’ They’re all becoming either bilingual or doing jobs in Spanish or going to Spanish countries.”
Is there anything else you’d like the students here to know? “I would like them to know that it may not always be that we are friends because I tell them first that I’m not here to be their friend, but if it happens in the amount of time that you’re here, that’s great. A lot of times after those years they’re true friends. I have kept them for quite a while.”
