Julio Enriquez

Julio Enriquez has been teaching for 19 years. He started in 2002 in West Texas for several years, and moved to the DFW area about 11 years ago when he first moved over to Plano. 

Wingspan: What did you do before coming to this campus? 

Enriquez: “I was a teacher in Plano. The high school that I was at was at Sheppard High School which is a freshman sophomore campus that feeds into Plano West so it was on the west side of Plano.”

Wingspan: Why did you choose teaching over anything else?

Enriquez: “I chose to teach it because it’s something that I feel like I think being around students being around the young adolescents and having an opportunity to be a mentor role model for the younger generation is something that I’ve always been inspired to.”

Wingspan: What inspired you to become a teacher?

Enriquez: “The youth that are the kiddos have been around the kiddos, it helps me feel more energetic if it makes me feel a little bit more. Like I’m, I’m doing something bigger than myself that I’m helping the future generations to be successful and prepare them for whatever they want. To pursue in life. I feel like I’m in a sense playing little part in the future of our societies.”

Wingspan: What do you enjoy most about teaching?

Enriquez: “Being around the kiddos, being around the kids seeing them on a day to day basis and of course working with the adults and the other teachers and being around other coaches and the athletes. I swear I really enjoyed being or being around the kiddos.”

Wingspan: What do you like to do in your free time?

Enriquez: “I’d spend most of my time with my family, where we’re, whether we’re going out to dinner or whether we’re going to go bowling gotta watch a movie. Being around my family is one thing that I enjoy spending my time with.”

Wingspan: What advice would you give to any of the students who wants to be a teacher?

Enriquez: “Don’t do it. Just kidding. I would say that for somebody who wants to be a teacher in the near future, is that you have to learn in a sense how to communicate with people and in a sense build relations and build relationships with other people and maintain positive relationships.”

Wingspan: What is difficult about teaching?

Enriquez: “Is it difficult sometimes… We do. We deal with a lot of paperwork. And then to some degree that can become a nuisance. But also the fact that you’re also dealing you’re also seeing a lot of the kids who haven’t, who lead trouble lives and in assessing it sometimes you feel like you can’t reach everybody and you can’t you can’t help every every single student that you want to help but I think that’s one of the biggest difficulties of being a teacher is that you see a lot of those things that a lot of other professionals don’t see.”

Wingspan: While you were in school, has world history always been your favorite subject?

Enriquez: “It was one of actually I really enjoyed math. When I was growing up. Math was like my favorite subject growing up somewhere along the way, you know how you know languages. If you don’t use it, you kind of lose it. So when I got out of high school and got into college, my courses didn’t require a lot of math classes. And so I felt like my math skills have gone dramatically down. So my major would really focus more on social studies. So that’s where that’s where the history came in. And I’ve always loved history, always learning loads about learning about different things in the past, especially when it comes to European history like Rome, Greece. Those are always things that have been fascinating to me.”

Wingspan: What were you like in high school?

Enriquez: “In high school? I was. Honestly I was like a straight A student. I was an athlete. I was in a band. I was in theater, everything that I that that school had offered because I grew up in a very small town. So anything that school had offered, I wanted to do. I play football, basketball, I run track, I play golf. I play tennis. I was at one player, I was at any kind of club they offered, I wanted to be in it. So I guess you could say I was kind of a nerd back then. But I loved it because it exposed me to so many different things and I got to participate in so many different things.”