GILROY
– It’s no accident that Jose Franchi is a chess enthusiast. The
game, which requires problem-solving skills and the discipline to
stick with successful methods, mirrors his work.
GILROY – It’s no accident that Jose Franchi is a chess enthusiast. The game, which requires problem-solving skills and the discipline to stick with successful methods, mirrors his work.
“In chess you have to think ahead,” said Franchi, who teaches three levels of math courses at Mt. Madonna High School, the Gilroy Unified School District’s continuation school. “You have to know why you are taking certain steps. You must always think ‘what happens if …’ ”
Franchi, 46, learned the ancient game when he was 9 years old and says he played “seriously” 15 years ago when he was still working as a production manager for a commercial printing company. Today, Franchi’s observations on chess sound remarkably similar to student Cindy Sepulveda’s description of his teaching style.
“He makes us use all the steps when we solve (math) problems. He makes sure we know exactly what we’re doing. He has a very unique teaching style,” said Sepulveda, a senior in Franchi’s Algebra class.
The style isn’t there by accident, Franchi explains.
“I’m trying to move students away from thinking about the right or wrong answer and into thinking about their methods. You have to focus on that in order to do math well,” Franchi said. “I want my students to not only get the correct answer, I want them to explain each step of the problem as well.”
Franchi was so committed to that idea he documented it as one of his teaching goals within his Individual Learning Plan, a plan that spells out for parents and schools what a faculty member wants to learn and accomplish within a certain time frame.
Like his teaching style, Franchi’s teaching job is something unique, too. Not only does the two-year veteran instruct three levels of math at the high school, he also teaches a reading course.
Fitting with the native Venezuelan’s emphasis on processes, Franchi’s language arts course focuses on reading methods and comprehension rather than literature and grammar.
Both Franchi’s commitment to students in class and outside of class pleases John Perales, principal of the 180-student high school.
“There’s something about him,” Perales said. “Whenever I’m in his class, he is giving clear directions and getting the kids involved. Like every first-year teacher, he had some tough times last year, but he’s doing wonderfully now. He cares about kids, he asks about their lives, he engages them inside and outside of class.”
Franchi also lets kids into his life.
In the beginning of the school year, he told students that by late October he wanted to quit smoking, “a terrible habit” as he calls it. Students told Franchi to choose a date and mark it down on the chalkboard. The date was Oct. 26, and from that day on Franchi said he received overwhelming support and encouragement from his students.
Roughly a month on the patch, and with constant inquiries from students, Franchi was able to cut down from one pack a day to total abstinence. Franchi admits that since going off the patch he has been smoking a couple of cigarettes a day.
Franchi’s plan is to go back on the patch for a longer time and then quit permanently.
“I know I can quit, I told them, but I just can’t do it without the patch,” Franchi said.
Franchi, who speaks Spanish and some French and Italian, came to the United States more than 20 years ago on a scholarship from the Venezuelan government. At a university in Venezuela, he studied math and statistics and began substitute teaching and tutoring at age 17.
A divorce and budget cuts in education prompted Franchi to change professions in the ’80s, when he worked himself up from a Kinko’s clerk position to management level at a large commercial printing operation.
Remarrying three years ago to wife Anita, an administrator in the Hollister school district, Franchi’s love of teaching started to rekindle. Two years ago, Franchi got an emergency credential, started work on his regular credential and landed the Mt. Madonna job.
There are a lot of opportunities for bilingual math teachers right now, said Franchi, and he has thought about going into the administrative side of education as long as it doesn’t remove him entirely from the classroom. But the 20-to-one teacher-to-student ratio at Mt. Madonna, the diversity of students and student needs there makes it the perfect fit for Franchi now.
“I love the interaction with students,” Franchi said. “I love it when a student, who maybe has struggled on something for a few weeks, all of the sudden says, ‘Now I get it.’ That’s why I teach.”
