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600 S 6th Street PO Box 878 Sunnyside, WA 98944
Phone: 509.837.4500 |
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| Working Stiff |
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| Travel helped data coordinator realize her calling |
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 | | Photo by Corey Russell/Daily Sun News | | Monica Guerra (R) shows some figures to Mabton School District Superintendent Sandra Pasiero-Davis. Guerra is charged with supplying school officials information for them to make good decisions. |
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By Corey Russell
MABTON - To run a school district efficiently, important information is needed. School officials need data to understand if their goals are being achieved. They need data to find out what to change and what to leave alone.
"Data helps us make smart decisions and she does it all," Mabton School District Superintendent Sandra Pasiero-Davis said.
The superintendent was referring to Monica Guerra, the data/assessment coordinator for Mabton School District.
Guerra is in her third year working for the school district. She provides the data that helps fuel the decisions made by the superintendent. "We can't make good decisions without good data," Pasiero-Davis added.
Guerra came to work at the Mabton School District in a round-about way. The Sunnyside native graduated from Sunnyside High School in 1992. After a self-prescribed break she started taking classes at Yakima Valley Community College in Yakima.
After some time at YVCC Guerra moved to Pullman and started attending WSU. She again decided to take a break and moved to Lake Tahoe, Nev. and worked at a casino as a Keno dealer. She eventually moved to Seattle and started taking classes at Bellvue Community College.
There, she lived on Lake Sammamish and worked at a mortgage company doing administrative duties. "I also worked at the Rock Bottom Brewery," she said with a laugh. "It was a fun job, it was great." She lived right on the beach. "It was awesome."
She finally transitioned herself back to Sunnyside, where she decided to continue her education. She went back to WSU, only this time it was online through the university's distance degree program.
This program allowed her to take classes without actually attending a campus. She liked it. "For me it was easier," Guerra said of taking her courses online. She said she had plenty of access to her professors through e-mail, phone calls and an online chat room set up for her classes.
While taking classes online she also worked at another mortgage company in Yakima temporarily. When that position ended, Guerra went to work for a couple at the mortgage company as their nanny. She had moved to Yakima to work as a nanny and when that position ended, she moved back to Sunnyside. While taking some classes at the WSU branch campus in the Tri-Cities, as part of a work study course, she worked at Cascade Elementary School in the Tri-Cities. At Cascade she met a girl she became friendly with.
"We used to joke about going to Nicaragua for vacation," she remembered. "One day my friend said she was going to go and I told her I was going with her." So they both went down to Central America for a month.
They stayed with her friend's aunt and uncle and traveled throughout the county, staying at different orphanages.
"That's where I knew I wanted to work with kids," Guerra said.
When she got back to the states a friend who had been involved with Americorps told her about a program. She joined the group and spent a year working at Artz-Fox Elementary School, working with groups of children in literacy. She loved it.
"I wanted to come to work," she said. "I looked forward to coming to work and working with the kids."
When the year was up she was offered a position in the school district and she accepted. Although she likes the people she works with she misses the one-on-one contact she had with the students when she worked in the Americorps program.
She didn't have any experience as a data/assessment coordinator but she gave it a try anyway. She learned the job as she went along. "It was a challenge," she added. "I liked that. It was all new for me."
She now spends her time collecting data and making sure it's correct. The toughest time for her and all who work in any school district is when it's time for WASL testing.
"It's a tough time," she admits. "The teachers and students are stressed and we try to make it easier for them." |
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