Student Profile
Vitals:
Name: Tina Padilla
Graduation Year: 2006
Hometown: New York City
Major: Education
Weekend Activity: Reading, Spending time with family
Tina Padilla is a recent graduate from Manhattanville’s Jump Start teacher education program. Prior to enrolling in Jump Start, she had worked in the advertising and marketing industry for 16 years. “I started to consider teaching as an alternate career when I discovered that working in advertising wasn’t as fulfilling as I had hoped it would be,” she said. “I began to think that teaching would be a great way to make a difference.”
Tina decided to enroll in the Jump Start program after learning that it was a good way to get her certification quickly. “The courses were very practical. After every class I would walk away with something that I could use in my future lesson plans. It wasn’t all just theory and textbooks.” When asked what her favorite class was, Tina responded: “The childhood math course was my favorite. It made me realize how much teaching methods have changed since I was in elementary school. I remember thinking ‘I never learned math this way!’ There were a lot of games and hands on ways of teaching math that I had never seen before.”
When Tina was hired to teach 4th grade in the Bronx, the Jump Start program supported her through that transition by providing her with a teacher mentor who visited her in the classroom once a week, and a field supervisor who visited once a month. “I should have made the career switch a long time ago, there is definitely no job as rewarding,” she said.