- Passion Ignited: Journeying Through the Joys of Teaching
- Thania Robles: The Adventures of Teaching
- The Unexpected Teacher: From Engineer to Educator
- The undying flame of hard work: The business journey of Yesenia Torres
Accredited with a Bachelor’s in Electrical Engineering, a Master’s in Business Administration, and a Master’s of Science in Mathematics Teaching, Mila Obnial shares her journey into what led her to become a teacher.
Upon migrating to America, Obnial was unable to continue pursuing her career in engineering leading to her teaching career.
“When we migrated over here to America, it was my husband’s decision for us to stay here in the valley,” Obnial said. “I can only work as a teacher because as an engineer, there wasn’t much opening for me, so in other words I didn’t have any option but to teach.”
However, from an unexpected circumstance, Obnial grew to love teaching. Beginning her teaching career in the Philippines by teaching college students, allowed Obnial to feel better by having teaching be her best option.
“Don’t get me wrong, I love teaching,” Obnial said. “I have always loved to teach.” “Teaching Mathematics was good since it is related to engineering because most of the subjects in engineering are mathematics, so I thought that I could do it well.”
Obnial holds a strong passion for teaching and is sure most of her students see that in her.
Obnial seeks to keep her student’s best interests in mind. She studies different approaches in teaching and adapts her approach depending on the type of students she has. However, this does not mean she doesn’t face any challenges.
“I had to study the culture of the students that I had, so that was a great challenge,” Obnial said. “Another challenge was knowing what to do with students who are always present but don’t pass the class, or students who have been very good at math, but don’t come to class. Those are the difficulties that I faced. I had to adapt to whatever was best for the students.”
No matter what challenges Obnial faces, she can find rewarding moments throughout her teaching career. Students who claim to not like math, but end up putting a bit of interest in it, are students who make teaching a much better experience for Obnial.
“Those are positive things for me to move on,” Obnial said. “If I could only have one student per semester, who would turn out to have almost no understanding of mathematics and end up passing their TSI and getting a good ACT score, that would be a blessing for me.”
Rewarding moments have shaped Obnial’s teaching career and her perspective on education. It isn’t just academic success that Obnial values. Through her teaching journey, she realized the impact of building relationships with her students.
“I would rather have a student who would remember me as a person, maybe not as a teacher, but as someone whom they can talk to and rely on,” Obnial said. “In other words, it is a relationship that is being built that I would prefer over the things that they learned in class.”
Obnial’s journey from an engineer to an inspiring educator shows that with passion, perseverance, and an unexpected turn of events, she grew to love her journey as an educator and enjoyed every step of it.
