Alumni: Some Graduates Can´t Get Enough of TCS

27 year old TCS alumni Susana Arias started university in the home popular music, she saw in herself that Architecture wasn’t right for her so she decided to move to the capital of South American soccer Buenos Aires. After she finished school in Argentina she decided to make a drastic change in her life, to come back to Medellin but not only Medellin to TCS. She wanted to give back what all of the years at TCS gave her but helping other students.

Arias who graduated from the TCS in 2009 always thought of coming back to TCS to work and appreciate what was being a teacher here. She wanted to know how it felt to help the students the same way many teachers did to her.

 

How Susana Started her TCS life as a student

Norberto Villa and Felipe Naranjo are two well respected teachers at the Columbus School not only because both of them have been 10+ years at the school also because of there ways of being respectful and kind to other students.

Villa, who has thought Spanish class in more than three grades, had Susana in 9th grade and really appreciated her being in her class all of the time.

“She was very responsible, yes I remember she was a very responsible girl, she always had a good performance in Spanish class, she was very calm, had a great sense of humor with very good relationships, good friends and she looked happy in the school,”  Norberto Villa ,10th grade Spanish teacher, said.

Naranjo on the other hand has spent all of his career teaching in 11th grade but has taught different classes like Religion, Philosophy, Social Studies and Psychology which was the class Susana was in. He always thought that Susana chose that class because that was what she going to study in the future and he was right.

“She was really interested in the class and she performed really well, she studied psychology later, obviously not because of my class but I think since she was Interested in psychology so she joined my class,” Felipe Naranjo ,11th grade Philosophy teacher, said.

Villa and Naranjo expressed a lot of kindness and respect with Susana when she was a student.

 

After School and In School

Arias left TCS thinking she was going to be a great architect but just eight months in her studies in La Bolivariana she thought this was not right for her, so she went and study psychology for six years in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

After Arias finished her studies in Buenos Aires she started working with kids with mental paralysis, with people in jail and even had a private practical.

“I have been doing psychological therapy with mentors in psychology buffets and in mental institutions,” Susana Arias, Head of HS learning center, said.

Susana started working in the school in 2015, her first job was subbing, but after one of the learning center people in elementary left because of maternity leave she got a contract for three months to work on the elementary Learning center.

“It’s been a long way, it all started three years ago I started of subbing in elementary, than middle school and than high school and than I filled in from somebody down in elementary from the learning center,” Susana Arias, Head of HS learning center, said.

While Arias did all of these in less than four years, she also has had a private practical to help kids.

 

How she ended up where she is know

Arias has had a really interesting background story from where she started to where she is right know, she started in High School out of nowhere when Roger Arbabi the ex-principal of HS offered her a Interview.

“They hired me for three months and before the time was up Roger (ex-HS principal) interviewed me for the position for the learning center teacher and I got hired so they automatically transferred me to high school, I was a teacher for about two years and than this year they gave me the job of the learning center coordinator,” Susana Arias, Head of HS learning center, said.

Villa has always had hopes for Arias and he even knew that she could been great at her job today just because all of her time that she spent at TCS studying.

“I think she does and she has a really big advantage over the other professionals of the area and is the knowledge of the work that she works in, for passing her 14 years of her basic education and all of the interaction she had at the school gives her the information to help her be where she is,”  Norberto Villa ,10th grade Spanish teacher, said.

Arias started her HS career getting a call up from Roger Arbabi for a Teaching job of the learning center and just this year she was offered a way better job, that was being the HS head of the learning center.

“She was really interested in the class and she performed really well, she studied psychology later, obviously not because of my class but I think since she was Interested in psychology so she joined my class,” Felipe Naranjo ,11th grade Philosophy teacher, said.