With 25 years of experience, Patagonia Elementary School’s new kindergarten teacher Patricia Munozcano is definitely not new to education. She has spent six of those years as a certified teacher. This, however, is her first time teaching kindergarten.
“I love it!” Munozcano reports. “At first it was daunting, like with any other grade but then we started getting into a routine, and I started teaching. I did my research.”
Munozcano had most recently been teaching third grade at Sacred Heart Catholic School in Nogales, where she started as a paraprofessional in 2003. “I was everything as well as a substitute teacher, and that’s what helped me decide to become a teacher.”
She said the greatest difference in teaching kindergarten is basic curriculum. “I’ve been used to the core subjects, since I was teaching third (grade) and up,” she said. “We often teach to the test. I’m used to that kind of program. Now I am doing ABCs and 123s. Totally different, but we have fun here.”
Munozcano has already found joy in watching her students’ growth. “Yesterday I was so proud of them,” she said. “They each learned three sight words by themselves in just a day. At week seven, that is pretty good for kinder. Everywhere they go, they look around and say, ‘Oh, look, a sight word. Another sight word! There’s our letters!’”
“I am surprised by all the kindness, the camaraderie that I’ve been seeing. I love my coworkers. I get excited to come here. It puts a smile on my face to come to work.”
Patricia Munozcano
She admits she was worried about working with the beginning learners. “I was nervous because kinder is really starting from scratch, and you’re teaching them everything,” she said. “But it’s good. and thankfully I do have supportive, nice parents here. They’ve been helping their kids, so we’ve been helping each other out.”
Munozcano likes to get to work early and get everything in perfect order. She lives in Nogales, so with road construction now, she gets started as early as possible. he She praises the elementary school’s adopted programs and philosophies, such as Beyond Textbook (BT). which is designed to go beyond traditional textbooks by focusing on standards, assessments and student growth. She explained, “I like BT because it does give us the pacing guide that we need, and what we need to teach. It is especially nice for kinder because they have the letters and the sounds.”
Munozcano’s path to finally becoming a certified teacher with a master’s degree has been a long one. “I started off at Pima in Nogales, and Pima shut down, so then I finished my associate degree through Cochise College,” she explained. “I went on to the University of Arizona to get my bachelor’s. Finally, I went to Grand Canyon University to get my Masters of Education in curriculum and instruction.”
After spending many years at Sacred Heart Catholic, Munozcano decided to take time off to complete her education. She said, “I needed to finish my college, because I was having a hard time doing school and working full-time.” Munozcano’s first years as a certified teacher were at Lincoln Elementary, also in Nogales, from 2019 to 2022, where she had 28-30 students in her class. “Having so many students was tough, and then Covid hit,” she said. “We went online without being trained or anything, but I learned.”
She went back to Sacred Heart in 2022, teaching fourth grade, and then second. “They also asked me to work on the administration team,” she said. “I loved being part of the admin team, but I was still teaching. It was a little bit stressful doing all of that.”
Munozcano grew up as part of a large family in Tucson, but she prefers living in Santa Cruz County. “I have six brothers and sisters,” she said. “I have 17 nieces and nephews, three of them are my goddaughters. I am the only one here in Nogales, but I told them I just love the community so much. The people are wonderful wherever you go. I mean everywhere in Santa Cruz County people are so nice.”
Munozcano especially likes the Patagonia school. “I am surprised by all the kindness, the camaraderie that I’ve been seeing,” she said. “I love my coworkers. I get excited to come here. It puts a smile on my face to come to work. That’s what I was telling my friends. I’m really happy here; I actually look forward to coming into work.”