Being the new guy at a school can seem scary. You don’t know anyone and the environment is different. This was the case for Alejandro Santana, the new addition to the AVID department and the only new hire at Alisal.
Born and raised in Salinas, Santana was part of the North Salinas class of 2011 and later attended CSUMB for 4 years. He majored in Kinesiology, as he intended to be a Physical Therapist. This later changed when he became a tutor. He tutored elementary students at Los Padres Elementary School for 2 years. From there he tutored for a year at El Sausal Middle School and one year at Alisal. Tutoring at all these schools made him fall in love with teaching. “Through that tutoring job I had, I realized I wanted to be a teacher,” Santana said.
Since he had a Bachelor’s in Kinesiology, he could become a health or PE teacher, all he needed was a teaching credential. During the time he attended school for his teaching credential, he was a substitute teacher and coach here at Alisal. He was also able to teach summer school PE and health. His first full-time teaching job was at North Monterey Middle School where he taught health for 4 years. After those 4 years he saw an opening at Alisal and took it as he wanted to teach there. “Whatever got me into Alisal was my main goal,” he said.
Santana loved coaching here at Alisal and it made him want to come back. He started coaching football in 2015 as a freshman coach and worked his way up. After a year, he moved up to coach JV for 2 years. In 2018 he finally got to varsity football and coached all the way till 2022.
He had to put a pause on his football coaching as he was having a daughter in 2023 and wanted to put his full attention to her, “Last year my daughter was born and I wanted to spend time with my family,” Santana mentioned, “So I decided to take a break from coaching.”
After a year off, Santana started coaching again but moved to coaching soccer. “Right now I am interested in soccer, I grew up playing soccer, so soccer is something I want to get into,” Santana said.
He is currently coaching the U11 El Camino Futbol Club. His deep fondness for soccer has had him in contact with the soccer coach here at Alisal as he tries to get a coaching role in the team. “I’ve been in contact with Mr. Cisneros (the varsity boys’ soccer coach) and he said, I can go out and help him,” Santana said. Now, he will assist coach Cisneros with the varsity soccer team in the upcoming season. He will not be an official coach this year but will go to every practice he can to assist.
As is the case with many new teachers, Santana has had an amazing welcome. “My first week here I had teachers welcoming me left and right and it was like ‘How can I help you?’ ‘How can I help you?’ and I just felt like “Whoa, there is so much support,” he said.
The students have been extremely respectful to him, something he did not see in his past job. He plans on teaching AVID for the next few years but is open to going back to PE or health. Overall, he has enjoyed the culture and positivity here at Alisal, “Here it’s like, oh man I’m in heaven” Santana said.
