She Was Born to Teach: Kindergarten Instructor Spreads Love Across Languages

April's Golden Apple Award winner is Miss Karina Briceño, a kindergarten teacher in Metropolitan School District of Wayne Township – the same school district where she grew up.

Inside Westlake Elementary School, kindergarten students experience the Polar Express, parties on the beach, and even a day at Disney, all thanks to Briceño’s exciting classroom transformations.

“I can’t explain it. She was just born to be a kindergarten teacher and that’s just her, it’s her destiny,” Courtney Ramos, a fellow teacher and parent to one of Briceño’s students, said.

Briceño is also bilingual, and has been instrumental in an educational transformation for both her English speaking and non-English speaking students.

“When I go to a classroom and I work with a student, they’re reading, they are writing in English. That’s amazing. That (makes) me feel so proud of her as a teacher,” Adames said. “It’s the dedication and the love and the passion that she has for her class, for her students.”

Principal Robert Irvine has noticed Briceño's passion, even though this is only her third year teaching.

“Her classroom culture, what she has created and sustained, is pretty amazing,” Irvine said. “Whether she’s transformed her classroom into a day at the beach or fine dining with a book sampling, or Camp Kindergarten, or the Polar Express, you just walk into her kindergarten class and it rejuvenates you. It creates a sense of joy that’s contagious in our building.”

Fellow teachers say Briceño spends her own money and time to give students experiences they might not get outside of school.

“She’s (always) thinking about what can I do to make this exciting a novel experience, something that they’re going to remember forever,” she said.

When asked what it means to be teaching students in the same school she went to, Briceño said,

“It means the world. I think it was meant to be, to give back to this community. To be something I didn’t see when I was little, to be that for them means the world to me.”

Briceño hopes other people learn that teaching means being kind, caring, and showing up for students.

“As long as you show up for these kids, and know that if you show up, they will be motivated,” Miss Briceño said.

Becoming a teacher wasn’t just about the lessons; it was about building relationships with her students and their families.