The word that might best describe Anna Portales when you first meet her is “intense.” It is not that the new special education teacher at the middle school is flamboyant or outgoing. She seems a bit shy at first, like the quiet students in high school and college who draw little attention. Portales denies this first impression and claims she was never overly studious at school. “My teachers in North Bergen used to say I liked to socialize more than I liked to study,” she said. “While I never got left back, I did the minimum.” This changed dramatically during her senior year of college in Florida, when she came upon a remarkable teacher who taught her how learning could be fun. “After that, I just took off,” she said. “I couldn’t get enough of learning when I was in college. I got more out of it, and I began to love to learn, seeking out things I didn’t understand.” Portales looks a bit like Julia Roberts, with the same dark hair and shape of face. She is a thin, fragile figure who has captured the posture of the classic teacher, simply clad in patterned dress and sweater and adorned with a single strand necklace. Although new to the Middle School this year, Portales started at Clarendon school in Dec. 1998, helping special education students. Promoted from within Born in North Bergen, Portales moved to Florida when she was 15 years old and went to school there. She came up north again at 25 looking to teach in the area. Currently a resident of North Bergen, she systematically called all the nearby school districts, determined to get a job in a local school system. “I picked up a phone book and called every school district until I found an opening,” she said. “I found one in Secaucus in October, and started in December.” In the Secaucus school district, officials like to promote people from within, often starting them part-time to see how well they perform, then rewarding them later with a full-time position. Portales’s future seemed promising. “They kept giving me more hours,” she said. “After a while, I had three classes in Clarendon School and one class in Huber Street school.” People routinely ask Portales how she can stand her job of constant dealings with special needs students. But she said the job has its rewards and the students respond very positively. “There are a lot of misconceptions about special education,” she said. But she admitted, “You have to have patience and you have to have a heart full of fire for the job.” Portales said people have to want to teach special education, which was the way she felt while enrolled in a summer program at Smith College in Massachusetts. Portales has taught grades 5 to 12, covering subjects such as language skills, mathematics and social studies. “Teaching kids to read is a big part of my job,” she said. “I don’t teach as much social studies as I would like. But I like history because history really is like gossip of the past.” Coming to the middle school to teach has brought its share of challenges. Students in the seventh and eighth grades tend to pose problems that were not evident in earlier grades and which they often have grown out of by the time they reach high school. Special education students are no different in this regard. “It is a more difficult time for all students, but when you have a learning disability, it gets compounded,” Portales said. “There are so many new things to learn when you reach middle school that a student didn’t have to worry about in elementary school.” Portales added, “Some students tend to get hyper. While some of these students may appear to be young adults, they can sometimes go crazy for a lollypop.” But with patience and understanding, Portales helps the students overcome their nervousness and get on with their lessons. “Teaching them can be a very rewarding experience,” she said. Charlotte Podesta, principal of the Middle School, said Portales is a very positive addition to the staff. “She has what it takes,” Podesta said. Her mother was a role model As a young girl, Portales never envisioned herself as a teacher. “I thought I would be married with kids,” she said, “even though my mother always told me I should go to college.” Portales admired her mother, a housewife who might have gone to college herself if not for her refusal to become a Communist while still in Cuba. “If you didn’t become a member of the party, you couldn’t go to college,” Portales said. “My mother read a lot, got straight As in school, but could not go to college.” Portales’ mother married a plumber/electrician and became a housewife, raising eight kids. She also owned and operated a beauty salon, but never forgot her love of knowledge and passed that onto all of her children. Portales, who put herself through school, said her mother always felt bad that the family could not afford to give her money for school. “She shouldn’t have felt bad,” Portales said. “She gave me love of learning.”
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