A career that led her back to school

Ms. Maria Geluz started her time at Armijo as a substitute teacher when her four children attended, but she didn’t become a full-time teacher on campus until years later.“I really enjoyed working here as a substitute and, when an art position came up, I applied,” she said in a 2021 interview.

While she taught several different types of classes, including  Desktop Publishing and Pre-Press Production at San Francisco’s Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising (FIDM), she was able to find a comfortable place teaching art at Armijo and has been here for almost seven years.

She didn’t start out with the goal of becoming an art teacher, however. She attended UC Davis as a pre-med major. “Then I realized it was not for me,” she shared in the earlier interview. “My other love was design so in my junior year, I switched my major to design.”

Her favorite ways to create art are through mixed media and watercolor. “I also love working with paper,” she said.

If teaching were off the table, she said that she would probably go back to being a freelance graphic designer, but ideally she wants to keep working with students. “I know I would find my way to working with kids in some way because I love what they teach me, how they see the world, and how they live in the now,” she said.