Her position remained open, waiting for someone to fill it.
With former Spanish translator Millie Delgado Gonzalez becoming a teacher at the beginning of this semester, her previous position remained open to a future individual to serve as the bridge between English and Spanish for students.
Then came Sophia Becerra-Tellez, whose dream was to be in the educational field. Even before entering this field, Tellez had always looked up to the translators already here at SHS, seeing them as incredible assets to the Southport team.
“I hope to, one, be an incredible asset as well and follow in their footsteps,” Tellez said, “while also embodying a welcoming sense to students here as someone that they can come to to receive academic help (and) societal help … ”
As Tellez fills in this open position, her goal is to support students and become someone they can confide in while giving back to the community that gifted her an appreciation for diversity.
Tellez graduated from Roncalli in 2019. Inspired by her history and government classes during those high school years, Tellez decided to study international relations in college.
She has always had a deep appreciation for the opportunity to be surrounded by people of many cultures, customs and languages.
“It’s something I fell in love with at an early age,” Tellez said. “So that’s what I pursued, that was my major.”
Tellez also did a concentration in pre-law and minored in multilingual translation and interpretation. She learned languages such as French and a little bit of German and perfected her Spanish along the way.
Her former professions include working for Congress as an intern in a congressional district office.
However, it was through the people who made an impact in her life, which were her YMCA supervisor and her intern coordinator for Congress, that she realized that the leadership role she sought out there was actually in the education field.
After her internship with Congress ended, Tellez searched for a job that fulfilled this role, something that she would enjoy, that allowed her to be close with the Indianapolis community and make an impact.
An individual from the Indiana Latino Institute, a Hispanic organization, emailed her about a Spanish translator position, bringing attention to the lack of Spanish interpreters at SHS and encouraging Tellez to join by letting her know she would make a valuable contribution.
Tellez had the sense that this was something great she could do for her community in hopes of giving back.
“It just generally means a lot to me,” Tellez said. “The intersections of both my culture and language that I grew up
speaking and the community that raised me, along with education and my current desire to amplify educational opportunities for students, that intersection is just incredible for me.”
Delgado says she has seen Tellez going above and beyond for students.
“She is very respectful of their time, of their academic needs (and) of their human needs, as far as who they are as people and students,” Delgado said. “I just really am happy that they found someone like Miss Tellez to come and support our kids.”
Reminiscing on a similar reality from her past, Tellez says she had a primary teacher who guided her through navigating new languages and
unfamiliarity in a new world.
“She just knew how to be that resource,” Tellez said, “how to be that safe space, how to be that person that we can depend on.”
With this new role at SHS, Tellez hopes to become like this teacher, someone who can
support her students and have them confide in her. While she hopes to eventually go back to the congressional level after learning more about educational policy, for now, she is extremely grateful for the opportunity to give back to a community that embodies the diversity she is so fond of.
“I really hope that (diversity) continues to be something that sets Southport apart and above,” Tellez said.
