As her first year at Downey High School, Vanessa Bedolla is getting used to the rhythm of campus as well as getting to know her coworkers. Bedolla has been doing an excellent job balancing work and school. In her free time, she enjoys watching Gilmore Girls to decompress. 

Before she became the new assistant principal, she was a teacher for eight years at three different schools. This included John Lincoln School in LA for two years, West Covina for one year, and then ended up in a charter school back in LA and was there for four to five years. She was let go a couple of times. However, during those years, she found herself helping outside of her classroom.

“I realized I really enjoy helping, doing things that affect all students in my school, not just in my classroom and so I kind of took that route and I love it. I Love the interaction with other educators,” Bedolla said. 

One of her goals this school year is to know as many students’ names as possible.

” I want to learn as many students’ names as possible because I know names are important. And in this office there is only a small group of all the Downey High School students that I meet, so being out at supervision making sure that I learn people’s names is my own personal goal,” Bedolla stated.