Daniel Guerrero

Melissa Spaulding, an english teacher at Granada Hills Charter High School (GHC), all wanted to do is her homework as well as read her books for hours every single day of the month. Not only that, she also sometimes wanted to curled up into small spaces where it is only herself whether it was in the bedroom or at school.

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These were some of the activities that Spaulding perform throughout her childhood until she reached a point of her life that she was required to conversate and expose more about herself to society over time. This lead to becoming more a challenge for her where she was not used to being social in public. However, some people in her life supported her along the way in her days of being a high school/ college student as well as becoming a teacher.

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Based off some of these activities, Spaulding was considered as shy person at that age and felt uncomfortable presenting in front of her classmates in school. The days that she was required to present, she would stutter throughout the whole entire presentation due to having a sense of fear beforehand. One of her presentations in high school made her feel embarrassed where she was pushed to do it by her philosophy teacher who believed in her over time.

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 “After the presentation, I went straight to my desk and place my head against it while being embarrassed” Melissa Spaulding said.

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These were the types of moments that Spaulding did not enjoy in high school years at all. However, everyday she would be inspire by her parents to keep on moving forward in life due to how amazing they are to her. Her dad is a professor at California State University, Northridge (CSUN) which inspired her to learn. As for her mom, she is caring where she will drop anything to help people which inspired Spaulding to be like her someday.  

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After graduating from high school and university, she begin to teach in 2006. That point in time she begin to move away from being shy on campus over time. Since then, she became more sociable than ever where she made a lot of new friends that she would hang out with outside of school. In addition, they are the ones who are responsible for bringing her and her future husband to meet in the first place. This further encouraged Spaulding to communicate with him more often over time.

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“One day, when my friends and I were leaving from Vegas. Granchamp told me that she knows one guy that will be perfect for me and I was like ” Spaulding said.

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In addition, her friends loves to hang out her a lot and thinks she is a great person to talk to in general at school.

“She is awesome. She is nerdy and a great companion of being like spicy and independent” said Alina Lee, an English teacher at GHC.

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Besides friendship, teaching also makes her feel a sense of confident to teach her students while moving away of feeling shy every day. When she was in school, she always wanted to become an English teacher due to love teaching and helping her peers on their homework. She cares and loves her students where she communicates if the need more time to finish an assignment. In fact, she loves to socialize with her students, she decided to invite them to her wedding.

As for family, she enjoys being a mom outside of school where she has one child. However, she is in fact pregnant right now where she is due by March. According to Spaulding, she feel that becoming a mom changed who she was and was her most defining moment in her life over time. Even though she may be shy at time outside of school, she feel becoming herself as a teacher made her feel more confident than ever.

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