Victoria de la Torre

This interview with Victoria de la Torre was conducted remotely via Zoom on October 13, 2020 while interviewer Annelise was in Oakland, CA and narrator Victoria was in Martinez, CA. Victoria teaches STEM and provides para-support to students with special needs at Rocketship Futuro Academy, a public-charter elementary school in Concord, CA. Victoria is the daughter of two teachers and was born and raised in Massachusetts. Prior to beginning her work at Futuro Academy, she explored a number of different career paths working in photography, as barista, among other jobs. She has two young children, who she single parents part-time. She describes her school as a close-knit environment serving a low-income and predominately Black and Latinx student body. She vividly describes the day her school shut down to transition to remote learning following the arrival of the COVID-19 outbreak in the San Francisco Bay Area. She describes the challenges of getting students the supplies they need to work from home and her concern for the well being of her students, some of whom are homeless or living in homes where violence in present and food is lacking. She reflects on the challenges of catching and holding students' attention through online learning and the complete of erasure of work-life boundaries. She discusses the efforts her school has gone to integrate anti-racist curriculum following the George Floyd and Breonna Taylor protests. She encourages schools to acknowledge the profound challenges this time has brought into the lives of their students and to teach in a way that responds to the trauma students may be facing.