CCC accounting teacher stumbled into career

Editor's note: This is one in a series profiling local educators each week.

Clovis Community College Division Chair of Business Administration and Behavioral Sciences Monica Sanchez's responsibilities vary from hiring faculty, overseeing faculty and scheduling, but her real pleasure comes from teaching an accounting class.

"For most of our students, accounting is one of the most, if not the most difficult classes that they take while they're on our campus, and I still get really excited and get a rush from watching the light bulb come on," she said.

Sanchez received her bachelor's degree in finance and economics from New Mexico State University and her master's of business administration from Wayland Baptist University.

What led you to a career in teaching?

I didn't intend to. I literally kind of just stumbled into it. I had moved back here years ago, and actually, a family member just suggested I apply at the college, because there wasn't really anything in my field. My degree is in finance, and I worked in the financial services industry, and I didn't like that.

I applied to the college, and then worked in several different positions in the student services area, and then a division chair needed an instructor in a pinch, and asked me to teach a course, and it just kind of grew from there. I actually loved it, and I never dreamed that I would. I tell people that I found my calling by stumbling into it. I didn't know that I was called to a be a teacher until I started doing it.

How has teaching changed your perspective?

In most disciplines, we learn as much from our students as they learn from us at times, especially when you're teaching things like management. I can only speak to my personal experiences as a manager, or the managers I've had, yet students obviously have different experiences and different insights of things that I've never thought of before.

Sometimes, just their questions that they ask, even in accounting or any class, really kind of open your eyes to a different way of thinking or a different way of seeing something.

What is your favorite memory of teaching so far?

I teach a tax class. This class is a very unique class here on our campus. The class is a week long class that is taught the week before the spring semester starts every spring, and students learn how to prepare federal and New Mexico state income tax returns. Then, they take the final exam, which is an IRS volunteer certification exam, and then they have to spend at least 20 hours actually preparing tax returns for low income or elderly members of our community. We open up to the public, and we start doing tax returns for free.

It's a lot more work than any other class, but watching the students - oftentimes, our students, no matter what their ages, haven't worked with the public, number one, so that's a great experience, and then it's an eye-opening experience for some of our students to see how other members of our community live.

Normally, the taxpayers that come in and have their returns prepared by the students are just so grateful, and seeing that exchange between them and the students - sometimes they're in tears, and they're trying to give the student money for this, or they'll just stand up and give them a hug. Watching that interaction, that's an experience that normally, you can't get in a classroom.

How has teaching made you a better person?

I would like to say I hope that it's made me more patient. I'm still working on that, though. I also think that it somewhat forces you to keep an open mind, and be willing to see other peoples' perspectives. Like I said earlier, the questions that they ask, or the comments that they make, or even the things that they have going in their lives or whatever, you have to be open to understand, and meet them where they're at.

I think that it's made me, hopefully, just a more open, understanding person, willing to see another person's perspective.

- Compiled by Staff Writer Eamon Scarbrough