Mrs.Fajardo in her classroom
Delta Fajardo is a teacher at Hastings High School who teaches Communications Arts.
“But when they told me about what the job was I absolutely took the job, partly because I was going to be able to do the one thing that helped me in life,” Fajardo said.
“I had some difficult times in my life and had it not been for these people I would not have found my voice and I want to be the same way for other people,” Fajardo said.
Fajardo likes that the class is applicable and can teach students skills they will need in the future. For example, she is helping a lot of people get the skills required for a job. The Comm Arts class focuses on the kind of speech you would do in your normal day-to-day life.
“I teach you to do a speech to demonstrate for another person and I teach you how to do a speech for a special occasion,” Fajardo said.
Fajardo’s favorite thing to teach in her class is demonstration speeches. A demonstration speech is like becoming a teacher, and teaching a small activity for someone else to do based on the presenter’s instructions.
“But personally, I learned how to change a tire on a truck because I had to be the person who was doing it,” Fajardo said.
Fajardo never thought she would teach a Comm Arts class; she thought she would always teach English classes. Fajardo has been teaching for 20 years, and out of the 20 years she has taught Comm Arts for 19 of them and plans to continue teaching Comm Arts until she retires.
“There was only one year I didn’t teach it because I had too many debate classes, so they took it away from me,” Fajardo said.
Fajardo teaches sophomores through seniors, but juniors and seniors in her Comm Arts classes. Comm Arts is a class that HHS requires all students to pass in order to graduate.
Fajardo’s Comm Arts class is a dual credit class, which is a class you can take in high school to get college credits and high school credits at the same time before you actually go to college. Jason Davis, an Associate Dean of Community Workforce and Education at Central Community College said
“You wanna knock these classes out in high school, so it saves you money and time and you’re also taking the classes at a reduced rate,” Davis said. If you take the class in High school it saves you money and then you also don’t have to take the class in college. “I had some difficult times in my life and had it not been for these people I would not have found my voice and I want to be the same way for other people,” Fajardo said.
