Filling her last teaching days with crafty memories

U.S. history and government teacher Tracey Olguin has kept a checklist of all the events she was looking forward to this school year. She wrote this list across the front of her desk, which is covered with chalk paint.

She has already crossed off items like First Day of School, Spring Break and Prom. The list is titled “My Last Weeks.”

After teaching for 25 years at Costa Mesa High School, Olguin will retire. The school’s Principal Jacob Haley says he already knows she will be missed.

“She shows her students that they have the ability to push themselves to be their best,” Haley said. “She teaches them to not follow the easy road but to take the right road for them.”

Olguin says she never imagined she would become a teacher.

After completing her undergraduate studies at UC Davis and her graduate studies at the University of San Diego, Olguin took a job as a paralegal in Sacramento. She remembers her desk faced a wall.

“I remember sitting there across from this wall and I thought to myself ‘I was not intended for this,’” Olguin said. “I was there for six months. But that was a valley that turned into a peak.”

The peak she refers to is teaching.

After leaving her role as a paralegal, Olguin enrolled in a secondary teaching program at Cal State Sacramento. She completed the program in 1985 and began teaching for the Newport-Mesa Unified School District in 1989.

While teaching at Costa Mesa, she said students often instantly took notice of her ability to craft.

“Her classroom is something you would totally see on Pintrest,” student Cassie Harriman said.

During last year’s prom season, a student asked her if she knew how to make a corsage. After watching a few YouTube videos on corsage-making, Olguin opened the first afterschool craft workshop for students to make corsages and boutonnieres out of flowers, ribbon, zip-ties and hot glue.

She decided to organize the same workshop for prom-goers this year. The Friday before prom, more than 30 students came to create corsages and boutonnieres for their dates.

ASB contributes $100 for these craft days but the rest of the cost of materials come out of Olguin’s own pocket.

“She knows a lot of us can’t afford corsages or boutonnieres,” student Beautrice Maradiaga said. “She holds activities like this because she truly wants to help us.”

For Olguin, the best part of crafting with her students is seeing them get out of their comfort zone.

“It gives them an opportunity to make something with their own two hands and to share that with each other,” Olguin said. “During corsage-making, students brought their dates and made these together. You make memories doing things like this.”

Olguin has four things left on her checklist: Senior Week, finals week, graduation and the last day of school.

As she goes through her last days of being a teacher, Olguin said she is excited to begin the next chapter — being a student again.

She will begin classes for Orange Coast College’s interior design program this fall. In between semesters, she plans to travel to El Salvador where she will help build latrines and possibly a classroom during a mission trip with a local church group.