Teacher Shoutout

The soon to be wife of Brad Pitt and phenomenal instructor, Ms. Bronkey, who currently teaches sophomores and juniors, is a Santa Maria Joint Union High School District English teacher of nineteen years. Ten of those years she spent at Delta High School, the remaining nine here at Righetti.

Ms. Bronkey received her undergraduate at Cal Poly University, which as a kid she would say “I’m never going there!”, whenever she passed by. Then she moved on to Chapman University to receive her Masters, and later got accepted into the first teaching position she ever applied for at Delta. After doing a lot of counseling work and “unteacher stuff” at Delta, she decided to transfer to Righetti for a little more “intellectual stimulation” and also to “be apart of a bigger high school”.

For as long as she can remember, Ms. Bronkey has always wanted to be a teacher. She told me she used to make her “friends go home after school and play school” with her when she was little. Now that she has her childhood dream career of being a teacher, I asked Ms. Bronkey what her favorite things about teaching are. She first told me it’s speaking with her students “about literature and how it mirrors life”. Then furthered, saying it’s “when I look up and I see all those kids and I realize that every single one is listening to me and is absorbing what I’m saying. It doesn’t really get any better than that”.

To her, what makes a good teacher is one who is motivated, likes their job, and doesn’t “get in their car in morning dreading coming to class.” Just as important, Ms. Bronkey says, is “loving the subject matter”, which has helped her immensely since she’s loved literature just as long as she’s loved teaching; for as long as she can remember.

If you didn’t already know, in college Ms. Bronkey was a cocktail waitress. She told me “every time around 2AM when someone would sell their mama for another drink,  I would tell myself  ‘this isn’t your life, this isn’t your life, this isn’t your life'”. And it really wasn’t her life.

The first Brad Pitt movie she saw was ‘Thelma and Louise‘, a 1991 film, in which Pitt played as a sexy young thief, naturally. She said, “and I’ve only seen it about forty times”. If you know Ms. Bronkey then you know this is pretty significant information.

As for her musical tastes, she gave special regards to David Bowie as her favorite artist. However, she also noted Billy Idol as another potential favorite because of the sentimental value she holds for him. If you do not know who either of these absolute icons are, shame.

Message From Ms. Bronkey

Ms. Bronkey wants us to know that even while she’s going on year twenty, she loves her job now just as much as she did from day one. In her closing statement, she announced, “I have faith and hope in the youth of the nation, and they give my life meaning. If I didn’t have this job I wouldn’t feel as proud of myself as I do”.