Jared Guiou: Dean's Scholarship

Jared Guiou has been awarded the Dean's Scholarship during the UCI School of Education 2018-2019 Scholarship Award Ceremony. Jared is pursuing his Single Subject Master of Arts in Teaching in Math. Below, he shares the following thoughts about his academic journey.

November 2018

I grew up in Chino Hills (just north of Orange County), went to Arizona to get my bachelor's degree in computer science, then came back home when I decided I wanted to become a teacher instead of a programmer. I spent a gap year as a substitute teacher to earn some savings before starting the MAT program here at UCI--but substitute teaching turned into full-time teaching when the comp sci teacher at my alma mater suddenly left and I was hired on an emergency permit! Teaching six periods of AP Computer Science with no training was a bit stressful, but my kids and I pulled through, and they beat the national average pass rates on their AP exams!

I am getting my teaching credential in mathematics and will be able to teach both math and computer science when I finish the program. I love math just as much as comp sci and took a lot of math electives in college; but given the scarcity of high school computer science teachers, I feel that expanding access to that field is where my talents will be best utilized.

In undergrad, I also squeezed in a minor in Asian Languages and several study abroad trips, my favorite of which was a summer spent in Taiwan. I'm trying to keep up on the small amount of Mandarin I learned there and hope to find employment in a district where it will be put to use!
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Jared Guiou and Associate Dean Elizabeth van Es