ORLANDO, Fla. — A+ Teacher Alexandra Figueroa has found a way to crack the code.
Every day she is on a mission to make learning fun so her students soak up the knowledge, and she knows she is helping to set the lifelong learners up for success.
Figueroa teaches kindergartners at Village Park Elementary School in Orlando.
“It also makes my day fun because I come to work every single day,” she said. “But I want to be here, and they make me think that I want to be here and have fun with them.”
Her mission in the classroom is not top secret: she believes for her students to learn she has to be creative.
“There’s no way they’re going to be able to focus and show their best if they’re not engaged in the activity,” she said.
She utilizes hands-on learning and group activities with a lot of imagination sprinkled in, which goes a long way in her classroom.
“I love that they have a beautiful and pure imagination,” Figueroa said.
Figueroa said she never forgot the way one of her teachers poured her heart into her lessons. She said that teacher inspired her to teach.
“I remember the teacher during, when I was little, she dressed up like a pumpkin and her lessons were vivid and she took us to a place that we couldn’t go — which was the teacher lounge — and we were able to open the pumpkin and get the seeds out and cook the seeds,” she said. “So, I think that was for me an aha moment, like that is amazing.”