Meet Migrant Teacher, Ms. Balderama

Ms. Balderama is a teacher here at SMHS who works for the Migrant Program and she also helps teach ELA Academy. She was a teacher before becoming a migrant teacher.

The migrant program helps students to stay on track with school and helps the students any way they can. She also provides services like if they need extra classes in school to help the students graduate and stay on track. She does home visits for the students for supplies and tutoring. She’s taught Kindergarten, JR High, and 5th grade and was an English and Math teacher when she was at the middle school level. She is an alumnus here at SMHS.

She went to Hancock College for three years and went to Cal State LA to get her degree. Her original major wasn’t always to be a teacher. Her original major was psychology and when she was at Hancock, she decided she wanted to get into teaching and she switched her major to liberal studies.

She loves being here at SMHS and she works with the migrant on all four high school campuses here in Santa Maria, but her favorite school to be at is SMHS. She loves working here because it feels like home to her. Her passion is people because she wants to get to know people, seeing how she can help them out, learning from them.

When the pandemic hit, it was a bit rough for her. She was teaching during quarantine and that was hard for her. It was rough but she was glad that she made it through.

If she was a fruit, she would be a strawberry. She would also be an orange because of the seeds and the bright colors that it has. She wants to be good and enjoy life.

Her family is what she describes as “wild and wonkey.” Her family gets along well most of the time but it also gets crazy. They sometimes drive her crazy, but she also feels like she drives her family crazy sometimes as well. She would like to try things with her family that they haven’t done before. She also has a son.

She has traveled some parts of California like Sacramento, Los Angeles, San Francisco, etc. She has also visited places outside of California like Florida, Minnesota, and Mississippi but she hasn’t traveled anywhere outside of the US; she plans to travel outside of the country one day.

For entertainment, she likes Titanic, All the Avengers Movies, Marvel Movies, and any sort of superhero movies. Her taste in music is mostly all types of genres like pop, classical, country, etc. Some of her favorite foods are Mexican food and Chinese food. She likes to watch football. What she does for entertainment is go for walks, kicking, hiking, barbequing, being with her family, watching movies, playing games, etc.

She has a lot going on right now but one thing she would like to get more involved in school is that she would like to advise a club of her own.