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Teacher returns to Globe… and brings a little bit of everything to the table
A flock of adolescent girls fly across the stage as I enter the High Desert Middle School auditorium. If I know anything about ballet (I don’t, really) my guess is that they are practicing jetés, where a dancer throws themselves horizontally in the air, in leaps.
To the side of the stage, there is a young woman directing their motions. That is Erika “Moquie” Flores, High Desert’s language arts teacher, dance instructor and cheer coach.
I don’t go unnoticed walking into her class. The minute the girls spot me entering the room, their focus shifts from their jetés to the camera in my hand. For a moment, the auditorium erupts into chatter and giggles. Today is the last day of school before winter break; I can feel the excitement. It is only a matter of seconds before Flores regains the girls’ attention.
At just 24 years old, Flores is more than two years into her teaching career, with seven classes on her plate, including this one. Observing her direct a class of 48 girls, it makes sense she has gotten so far in so little time. She commands respect from her students, and gives it back in return.
“I love teaching, I like working with kids. I’m more comfortable with my students than I am with adults,” she tells me outside her class. “I told my students that you were coming to interview me today. They asked if I was nervous. I said I was terrified!”
“I think I am a kid at heart, still. So I can relate to them, they relate to me, and I’m not afraid to make fool of myself with them,” she adds. “They have to know you’re a real person.”
Flores knows what it’s like growing up here in Globe. She went on to study at Northern Arizona University after graduating from Globe High School. And, once she got to college, she wasn’t entirely sure what she wanted to study.
“I changed my major five times,” she says. “I started out as a journalist, and then when to psychology, and just kind of dipped my toes in everything.”
She settled on elementary education.
“I think that is what I had always wanted to do, but I had talked myself out of it just because teachers don’t make a lot of money,” she explains. “But when it came down to it, I realized that was where my passion was, and was what I really wanted to do.”
During her time at NAU, she received the Rodel Promising Student Teacher Scholarship. She was placed in a student-teaching position at a low-income school, and upon graduating she signed a contract that she would teach at low-income schools for three consecutive years.
Her father was diagnosed with cancer after she graduated in 2011, so for a year she came home, and taught fourth grade at Copper Rim Elementary. Then, after getting married, she moved to Chandler and taught fifth grade ELD (English Language Development) in the Laveen Elementary School District.
“All 28 of my students did not speak English as their first language,” she says. “The ELD program was not anything I had ever done before. I had heard about it in college courses. Nothing prepared me for what I was walking into.”
Not only did she have to cover reading, writing, math and social studies, she also had to teach by another set of standards for English language development. Challenging as it was, all but four of her 28 students reclassified after taking their English language proficiency test.
“I wanted to cry when I got the results,” she says.
It wasn’t a happy occasion that brought her back to Globe, however. She moved back home after her father passed away last August. She has been at High Desert ever since, teaching the subject of her choice: language arts. Everything she learned at Laveen she brought with her to High Desert.
“It’s nice to be back home, and to be able to try to make a difference in a place that has meant so much to me!” she says.
What was most exciting, she says, was finding out that as a sixth grade teacher, she would be reunited with the students she taught as fourth graders at Copper Rim.
“It’s been cool to see them grow and see how they’ve changed,” she says. “I feel like I have such a good relationship with this group of kids because I knew them prior.”
Right around the time Flores came to High Desert, students began pushing for a dance class. Since Flores has danced all her life, including when she was on the dance team at NAU, and taught at dance studios in both Mesa and Globe, she was asked to teach the class. She gladly took on the challenge, and began a dance class covering jazz, lyrical and hip hop. They just had their first performance in October. They performed “Thriller.”
“All of the girls who are in the class want to be there and are excited to learn,” she says. “The girls who have been dancing their whole lives are helping the girls who have never taken a dance class before.”
For a project, they had to research different styles of dance in pairs, from ballroom dancing and tap dancing to pop-and-locking.
“I think that sparked a lot of interest in a lot of different genres,” she says. “Hopefully we’ll be able to go over those before the year is over.”
Next they will be performing in the spring talent show.
On top of her dance class, she teaches six sixth grade language arts classes throughout the week, with up to 32 students per class. It makes for long days, days that start at 7:10 and end at 5:30, after cheer. That’s right, she also took over High Desert’s cheer team.
“Our team this year is really good, I’m really proud of them,” she says. “They’re hard workers.”
If there is one thing she feels strongly about when it comes to her students, whether it is her dance students or her language arts students, it is this:
“I want them to have big dreams. I know sometimes teachers say not to give them unreasonable expectations. But the fact of the matter is, they can be whatever they want to be. It doesn’t matter where you come from, if you want it and you work for it, you can achieve it… No matter what you do, you need to do something you love.”
If anyone has proved that, Flores certainly has.
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Jenn Walker began writing for Globe Miami Times in 2012 and has been a contributor ever since. Her work has also appeared in Submerge Magazine, Sacramento Press, Sacramento News & Review and California Health Report. She currently teaches Honors English at High Desert Middle School and mentors Globe School District’s robotics team.
