“Wakey wakey,” says Señor Arnaldo Rodriguex to his sixth-period Spanish 5 AP class of 25 tired students. His eyes flicker around the room, admiring the countless photos from trips with his students all around the world —  from a train ride in Italy to a festival in Germany, from salsa dancing in Mexico to flamenco dancing in Spain.

Rodriguex said that when he looks back on his more than four decades of teaching, he knows that he has loved almost all  of it. At age 24, he defied his father’s expectations when he decided to go into teaching rather than become a chemist.

Growing up in the countryside in his native Costa Rica, Rodriguex said he enjoyed a happy childhood. The second oldest of five children, he always had companions to play with.

“We were always climbing trees, swimming in rivers, taking hikes through the mountains and stealing oranges,” Rodriguex said.
    
Sometimes, when his father, a pilot, received a break from work, the family headed to the beach or hunted snakes — one of his father’s favorite hobbies.

One of these snake hunts was particularly memorable: an enormous snake coiled around his father’s legs, and 9-year-old Rodriguex could only watch helplessly as the frightening scene unfolded.

"My uncle and I panicked, and we were both hanging from my dad’s arms,” Rodriguex said. “He was trying to throw us off because he needed his hands to be able to catch the snake, but we wouldn’t let go [and] just kept screaming and screaming.”

Eventually, his dad was able to free his hands, capture the snake and skin it later.

But Rodriguex’s childhood wasn’t all fun and games. He was a serious student.

And from an early age, he showed talent in teaching. Armed with a chalkboard and piles of notes, Rodriguex organized study dates at his house with his friends and led group discussions.

“We had to take 14 classes every year, so there was a lot of pressure to pass them all,” he said.

In his senior year, Rodriguex received an opportunity to be a high school exchange student at Lakewood High School near Los Angeles. He took the offer without a second thought. His choice to go stemmed from a memorable childhood experience.

When Rodriguex was 9, his father took him to Disneyland.

“Coming from Costa Rica, I was so impacted by [Disneyland] that I believed that it was real,” Rodriguex said.

After staying in the U.S. as an exchange student for a semester, Rodriguex decided to finish his entire senior year in the U.S. He then applied to several colleges, including UCLA, before deciding to live with his aunt in San Jose and major in chemistry at San Jose State University.

His father wanted Rodriguex to eventually go back to Costa Rica and get a job in industrial chemistry, manufacturing products like soaps and pesticides.

And although he enjoyed studying chemistry, Rodriguex admits that he never really felt a calling for the scientific field.

“That was [my father’s] vision,” he said, “but it wasn’t mine.”

At the end of his sophomore year in college, Rodriguex decided to pursue a career in education.

After he completed a class presentation on morphology, a branch of biology, his professor was so impressed by the way Rodriguex lectured the students that she took him aside and asked if he had ever considered becoming a teacher.

"She awoke the sleeping teacher in me,” Rodriguex said.

After that year, he changed his major to Spanish Linguistics and his minor to Spanish.

Even though his father was initially skeptical, he decided to let his son pursue his passion. The decision turned out to be a fateful one: Once on that path, Rodriguex never looked back.

As of now, Rodriguex has been a Spanish teacher at Saratoga High School for more than 40 years.
  
Since students often struggle with Spanish, especially the oral part, Rodriguex attempts to present the language and culture through a palatable way that students can enjoy —  and expose them to real-life situations and traveling.

“Ever since I started teaching, I have never failed to take the students to some place,” Rodriguex said.

Every trip to foreign countries brings new, funny and sometimes even scary experiences.

Rodriguex recalls a particularly frightening flight when he and a group of 86 SHS students travelled from Sochi, Russia, to the Moscow in 1989 as part of People to People, a program offering educational traveling services for students, to learn more about the Soviet Union.

“The plane had no seatbelts,” Rodriguex said. “When I asked the stewardess about the issue, she just said, ‘Well, hold on to the seat.’”

Unfortunately, he said travel is less common now for students.

Before the 2000s,  SHS students hosted almost 25 foreign exchange students each year; this number has rapidly decreased in the last decade.

“It’s a shame because traveling is a way [to] relax and learn,” Rodriguex said. “It’s a way [to]  cultivating longtime friendships.”

Of course, Rodriguex still takes students yearly to Cuernavaca, Mexico, each year to learn at the Bachillerato Internacional Universitario and stay with families there. In the past couple of years, he has arranged for Cuernavaca teens to come to Saratoga as exchange students and experience life here.
    
Rodriguex said he has treasured every second of his career and hopes to continue it as long as possible.
“I could’ve retired already, but I’m still teaching because I still enjoy what I do,” Rodriguex said. “I enjoy seeing the progress students make.”