Ahead of the Crystal Apple Awards on Feb. 10, Salem Reporter is profiling several educators nominated in 2023. The awards are presented by the McLaran Leadership Foundation and the Salem Area Chamber of Commerce at the Salem Convention Center. Tickets are sold out.
Dennise Pozos Gonzalez had never heard of Salem when she got a call asking her to move here.
She’d been teaching in Guadalajara, Mexico for about five years and was looking to move to the U.S. through a Mexican government program for teachers.
Her first call was from a recruiter for the Salem-Keizer School District, who was eager to have a bilingual teacher who could cover social studies and Spanish literature.
Pozos did her research.
“It looked so pretty,” she said of the city. And it met another requirement for her: there was a Costco.
She accepted a job teaching at West Salem High School in 2016— the fourth teacher to take on the dual language assignment in almost as many years.
“As a dual language teacher you don’t only teach but also translate the whole thing. So many teachers found that really difficult,” she said.
But for her, it was a calling.
Now 38, she’s the head of the social studies department, known among her colleagues for delivering engaging lessons and going the extra mile to translate coursework, and by her students for her passion and kindness.
“Every single interaction with Pozos is genuine. She is a heartwarming soul to be around, and she spreads positivity and love everywhere she goes,” wrote a former student in her Crystal Apple nomination.
Her classes are aimed at students who have been through the district’s dual language program, taking courses in both Spanish and English since early elementary school. She teaches both history and literature in Spanish, work which often requires her to translate her own materials.
“Her lessons still blow me away with how they masterfully incorporate project-based learning and academic rigor,” wrote colleague Jaela Dinsmore in her nomination. In her freshman U.S. history class, “she facilitates a simulation where students move through different aspects of the Industrial Revolution, all with defined roles, actions, and consequences that are based on important historical processes to help students understand the causes and effects of the era.”
Pozos studied communications in college and began her career as a broadcast journalist for Mexican station Televisa.
But she said the security risks of being a journalist in Mexico during the late 2000s and early 2010s proved too much, and she didn’t enjoy working weekends and holidays constantly. After losing an administrative job at her university, she recalled being told she’d make a good teacher and went to the high school across the street, offering her services to teach history and Spanish literature.
“About two weeks later they called me, like, ‘A teacher just resigned, we need someone right away.’ So that’s how I started, and I became a teacher by accident,” she said.
The former student who helped nominate Pozos for the award noted she’s worked to make her classroom welcoming for nonbinary students, researching and teaching students about gender neutral alternatives in a language that assigns a male or female gender to inanimate objects, adjectives and other parts of speech.
Pozos said she initially resisted evolutions in Spanish, like using the vowel “e” as a neutral alternative to ending words with a masculine “o” or feminine “a”.
“The language evolves with the people. Language will die if you don’t have people who speak it, so it has to evolve,” she said. “Many teachers tell me, ‘Oh, maybe it’s a phase’ and I was like, ‘Well, if it’s a phase, it will pass, but then they’ll remember that during that time that that was so important to them, we were there to support them.”
She said her students inspired her to research it more, including former Mexican students she’s in touch with who are nonbinary or transgender and helped educate her. Her priority is making students feel welcome in her class.
“They’re learning Spanish and they’re owning not only the language but the whole identity of being bilingual. So I didn’t feel it was fair for them to feel outside that language they love so much,” she said.
Pozos now has a green card and recently bought a house in Salem which she shares with her dog, a corgi and schnauzer mix named Nugget who she brought from Mexico.
“Coming here, teaching these amazing kids, having the opportunity to grow as a person as a professional — I mean, this is the freaking American Dream,” she said, smiling.
Contact reporter Rachel Alexander: [email protected] or 503-575-1241.
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Rachel Alexander is Salem Reporter’s managing editor. She joined Salem Reporter when it was founded in 2018 and covers city news, education, nonprofits and a little bit of everything else. She’s been a journalist in Oregon and Washington for a decade. Outside of work, she’s a skater and board member with Salem’s Cherry City Roller Derby and can often be found with her nose buried in a book.
