Every morning, after riding on the LIRR for an hour to arrive at Millennium, Ms. Pacheco meets her students with a bright smile and enthusiasm to teach. But little do her students know that she just spent her whole commute indulging in the very tasteful TV show Vanderpump Rules.
After nine years teaching at Murrow High School, Alexandria Pacheco arrives at Millennium and has happily found a tight knit community of fellow educators and eager students at Millennium Brooklyn. Pacheco co-teaches 10th grade Humanities, as well as her own section of 11th grade U.S. History. Pacheco has always wanted to be a teacher; as a child, she recalls, “I used to play school with my friends.” Inspired by her own 10th grade history teacher, Mr. Bergen of Monroe Woodbury High School, she set out to achieve the same goal. Bergen was “personable, funny, charismatic and had an excellent way of lecturing and telling history that made it memorable.” He also, Pacheco remembers, “put up with my annoying pestering of asking him what my grade was on a daily basis and constantly bothering him on his free periods/lunch to pick up the work I missed because I was frequently late to school.” But mainly she remembers that “he was understanding, kind, interesting and genuine and I really appreciate those characteristics in teachers.”
When asked why she was drawn to Humanities specifically, Ms. Pacheco said that even though she technically trained to be a Social Studies teacher, she loves English and is an avid reader. She is drawn to non-fiction and is currently reading “How to Hide an Empire” by Daniel Immerwahr and “Greenlights” by Matthew McConaughey; her favorite book is “Circe” by Madeline Miller. “When I got hired here for Humanities, I got really excited because I love literature and I think that there are so many parallels between teaching ELA and Social Studies.” She was excited to take on Millennium’s hybrid curriculum. “It’s not a program that’s common in the city anymore and I think that having [the] integration …and having that much more time with your students and really being able to parallel those writing assignments is really important.”
When asked how she would describe her teaching method, Ms. Pacheco replied, “I really like station activities and inquiry learning where students can figure stuff out on their own. I really don’t like lecturing.”. As one of her students, I personally loved the station’s activity about mercantilism. It was a very creative way of learning and I still have not forgotten about what Mercantilism means (an economic policy that maximizes imports for an economy). When doing this activity, we as students floated around the room each carrying a different countries resources and trying to trade with other people/countries. The idea of this game was to make us learn about how countries that had industrialized had a better market and made the system rigged towards them. She notes that she shares this affinity with many of her colleagues: “[I prefer] group work and writing and simulations and games! I love games.” To motivate her students, she focuses on “intrinsic motivation, really just trying to get them to fall in love with the material on their own, as opposed to ‘Hey you have to learn this, there’s a test.’ I think a lot of it is getting them to be excited about reading and about the content.”
It is clear that Ms. Pacheco has great passion for her work, and especially for the students she works with. She says the most inspiring part of teaching for her is when she watches “the lightbulb goes on in a student’s head,” and when she sees “their progress and growth and efforts paying off.”
Pachecho got her start teaching Social Studies to middle schoolers, first at MS 319 in Washington Heights and then at Andries Hudde Middle School in Flatbush. “I worked there for three years as a 6th, 7th, and 8th grade Social Studies teacher and that’s where I learned classroom management because middle school is wild.” She witnessed a lot of fights, and even had to split some up herself in her classroom!
After teaching at Murrow for nine years, Ms. Pacheco left, mainly because “[i]t was just way too hard to get there. I still live on Long Island but I take the LIRR to get here now, and being able to sit on a train…is much easier. A lovely hour of peace.” When asked how Millennium compares to Murrow, she noted the smaller size of Millennium as the main difference. “It’s a very different vibe working for such a small school versus a big school.” At Murrow, she would teach about 175 students a year, whereas at Millennium she teaches around 80. She appreciates both the reduced workload of the smaller classes and the intimacy she can foster with students. “I have a lot more opportunities to spend more time with my students…so I think that I really am getting to know each student that I teach much better.” Pacheco also feels more connected to the staff at Millennium. “At Murrow, I felt that I was really close with my Social Studies department teachers but I didn’t really know other teachers in the building. But here I know other ELA teachers and social studies and math and science and stuff, so that’s really nice to have a smaller staff that is a little bit more integrated in that respect.”
Ms. Pacheco is known not only for her passion for teaching, but also for her iconic sense of style. She claims to have “gotten more comfortable with what she wears to work. I’m happy that all the teachers here dress down because I would feel like such a fish out of water with some of the things I wear, but because I’m traveling so far, I try to be comfortable.”
