Jessica Raygoza has been a teacher for 15 years, though she hasn’t always taught at Stagg. Before teaching art at Stagg, Raygoza taught in Long Beach, California at Washington Learning Center and Franklin Middle School. Raygoza said she was inspired to become an art teacher. “I have always loved art and wanted to teach it to other people,” Raygoza said.

According to Raygoza, there are things they don’t teach you in college about becoming a teacher. “While becoming a teacher, I did not expect all of the discipline,” she said. “They teach you a few things about it in college, but it is completely different when you are actually in the classroom.” 

Raygoza shared a bit about her everyday relationship with teaching,“The easy part for me is that I want to be doing this and I love doing it. The hard part about this is getting the students to buy into it and coming up with lessons that will make them want to actually do the work.”

With midterms coming up, Raygoza has her finals set for her classes before Spring break. The final will consist of practically all the material the class has covered for the past year such as line drawing, shading, value, watercolor, shading with colored pencils, texture and patterns.

Junior at Stagg and former art student, Monica Sanchez, enjoyed Raygoza’s art class. “My experience having Raygoza as my teacher was fun. She is really chill, laid back and welcoming as long as you’re getting your work done and not being extremely disruptive during class. I really enjoyed it and I would definitely have her as my teacher again if I could,” said Sanchez.

While in Raygoza’s class, Sanchez talked about how the assignments are engaging. “On some of her assignments, you really have to focus on the art that you’re creating, which could be sort of challenging; For example, having to mirror the other side of a picture,” Sanchez said. 

Sharing some of her favorite parts of Raygoza’s class, Sanchez said. “Art pushes you to step out of your comfort zone in some ways with different forms if you aren’t really an artistic person.” Sanchez found art very calming as she got to focus on one thing at a time.

As someone who knows the environment of Raygoza’s class well, Sanchez gave advice to students wanting to take the class too. 

“Some advice I would give anyone who is considering joining Raygoza’s class would be to respect her rules and do the work she assigns, it’s as simple as that,” she said. “She is one of the best teachers as long as you’re getting what you need to get done in her class and you are not being disrespectful.”