Invasion of Privacy: Torianna Robleto and connecting in the classroom
Geneseo’s education major is by far its largest, and with hundreds of students enrolling in and graduating from the program each semester, it can be difficult to spot the future educational gems—those wholly impassioned by the prospect of teaching future generations. Enter Torianna Robleto, a junior childhood special education major with endless zeal for both learning and teaching.
Robleto developed an interest in education starting in high school, where they began spending time in classrooms geared toward kids with special needs, a serendipitous experience that led them toward their ultimate vocational path: “I just tried something one day and it clicked, and I thought, I’ve gotta keep doing this.”
The experience was both exciting and, in their words, eye-opening: “It was so eye-opening. [The kids] had such a wide range of abilities… some of them still needed help with holding utensils and feeding themselves… some of them were already good with the pencil grip, but they needed more behavioral management. There were just so many moments where I was like, this is so cool. I want to keep doing this.”
For Robleto, experience is everything; although they came out of high school with more experience and their chosen field than most new education majors, there are still some situations that can only be handled through hands-on learning, both inside and outside of the classroom: “There is a weird transition [where] everything is a ‘what if.’ A lot of it involves asking the people who have the experience, [and] all these professors have experience teaching. So, you ask them, what did you do in that situation? How do you handle that?” Robleto also cites Professors Douglas Mackenzie and Professor Jennifer Waddington as members of the education department whose experience and commitment to thorough education for all kids has helped them along the path toward their degree and, ultimately, their own classroom.
As for the potential challenges in their fieldwork so far, Robleto has some unconventional wisdom: “I always tell people, I love when a kid gives me attitude,” they said. “You get to see, first of all, a part of who they are—their little personality. You also get to see how other people talk to them. A lot of the time, they’re just imitating other adults that talk to them. So if a kid is super rude to others, to myself or peers… I have to figure out how best to guide this child into better wording, because when they have an attitude, they’re just upset they have to do the work, which I understand, and [can] help them express this.”
Robleto is all about fostering connections with kids and developing a strong sense of trust. This may come in the form of, for example, working more consistently with nonverbal kids, or kids who have trouble expressing themselves through just one language; with a concentration in Spanish, Robleto has enabled themself to reach more kids through the lenses of multiple languages: “There’s such a huge horrible gap between special education and bilingual education, [and] there’s an overrepresentation of bilingual kids in special education. So, my biggest goal is to utilize both [English and Spanish].”
As they begin wrapping up their junior year of college, Robleto’s excitement for future teacherhood all but waned: “I really want to get these kids excited for school,” they said. “I can't wait to be the teacher who, for every spirit day, [is] dressed up with something; [who for] every little holiday I could think of, [has] something in my classroom… I want school to be fun for them, and not just fun for them, but something that they look forward to. I want to just create that environment, at least in my classroom [where] they can be themselves: [where] they can learn something while being themselves, and where they can always have a friend somewhere in the room.”
One thing is for certain: Torianna Robleto’s future students will be more than lucky—and surely incredibly excited—to call them “teacher.”