Meet Ms. Zepeda

Ms. Zepeda is in her second year of teaching here at SM. She was a student teacher at PV for a year. She went to Cal Poly and did her credential program there. For high school  she went to Righetti. Ms. Zepeda didn’t always plan to be a teacher. She said, “when I started [college] I didn’t want to be a teacher because I was like, when I was in high school I didn’t really have any teachers that I can relate to, especially not in my science classes, so I was like I can’t see myself doing that, but then as I was going through college, I realized I was doing a lot of activities that involved working with students or teaching them science and just interacting, and that’s what I really liked, so I ended up doing that.”

Ms. Zepeda loves to go hiking, and enjoys going to restaurants with her friends for fun. She loves the Harry Potter books.  She also likes to travel; her favorite place to visit is Hawaii.

During quarantine Ms. Zepeda went for walks since she got irritated doing nothing.

Ms. Zepeda’s biggest passion is helping women to go into STEM. “I feel like a lot, especially women of color, they don’t see themselves being anything in science and anything in math, and that’s what I’m really passionate about.”

Ms. Zepeda tutors after school which is another way of her getting involved with the school; she also goes to some of her students games if they play sports. Ms. Zepeda likes to talk to her students about their life outside of school, and tries to understand them as human beings not as her students.

If you are going to college here is tip from Ms. Zepeda: “Get involved. Experience it; it doesn’t have to be in school; it could be outside in the community, volunteering or just trying jobs, whatever it is, so that you have a better idea of what you like and don’t like, so when you go to college you have experience that you can talk about.”