Juan Castillejos is just in his first semester teaching math at MiraCosta College, but his connection to the school, as well as his affection for it, goes back more than a decade.
A Tijuana native, Castillejos had been planning to go to college since he was in high school, but having moved to the United States in his junior year, he didn’t have enough English credits to meet university requirements.
“Thankfully, there was still a path for me to go to college,” he said. “MiraCosta.”
Neither of his parents attended college, but they saw the value of education. Castillejos said they encouraged him to participate in a yearlong extracurricular English course in the ninth grade, which he said became very useful when he came to the United States with his sister and mother to join their father, who had been traveling to Tijuana a few times a week to be with his family.
As a senior at La Costa Canyon High School, Castillejos learned about MiraCosta when an ambassador from the college gave a presentation to his AVID (Advancement Via Individual Determination) class.
He attended MiraCosta from 2012 to 2015 as a biology major, and in 2013 he began working for the San Dieguito Union High School District as an AVID tutor and to support English learners in the classroom.
He also joined the MiraCosta Math Learning Center as a student worker in 2014 to tutor students in math.
“I enjoyed that interaction,” he said about tutoring. “I’m not a very extroverted person, but when I’m talking to students about math, I feel comfortable. I can have a conversation with students. I like being energetic when I’m teaching or tutoring.”
He liked the experience so much that he pivoted from his plan to pursue a medical degree and instead began working toward becoming a math teacher. He graduated from UC San Diego with a master’s degree in computer science last year.
Castillejos said his mother had wanted to be a teacher herself, and he sees himself and his sister, an elementary teacher in the San Marcos Unified School District, as fulfilling her dream. Reflecting on the diverse population at MiraCosta College, Castillejos recalled how some of the older students he had tutored reminded him of when his mother was trying to complete her high school education and was struggling with algebra.
“My mother was an inspiration, and my biggest supporter when I decided that I wasn’t going to pursue medicine and instead I wanted to teach mathematics,” he said.
As a professor, Castillejos continues to work toward helping all students succeed.
“We are very student-centered,” he said. “That is one of our values. It’s trying to support our students as much as we can. That’s what we try to do the most. For me, it’s not just showing up to lecture. I want to make sure students are getting something out of the lecture, that they’re not just writing it down and not understanding anything.”