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From Students to Staff: Joshua Roberts
For many, attending community college is a means to earn a degree in order to gain employment. For others, the “community” in community college means working with teachers who truly care about the future of their students in an effort to better themselves.
Not only did City College English professor and department chair Joshua Roberts experience the latter scenario, he decided to become one of those teachers.
A self-described poor student leading up to his graduation from Kennedy High School, Roberts began attending City College in 1991.
“I was a horrible student in high school,” says Roberts. “[It wasn’t] because I wasn’t sharp enough, I was just a bad student. When I came here, I was pretty clueless as to what I wanted to do. I kind of took classes on and off for about five years, just enough to still be in school but not really.”
It was at that point that Roberts decided he wanted to become a teacher.
“It was the instructors here that really helped me learn how to be a student and focus myself and go after the things that I wanted,” says Roberts, who shares with his students that he attended City College and went through similar struggles as a way to help them feel like he knows what they’re going through. “I wanted to be able to give back and be able to help others the way people had helped me.”
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After spending two years at City College on a quest for “academic renewal,” Roberts, who became a straight-A student, transferred to Sac State to pursue his career. He graduated with his Bachelor’s degree in English in May of 2001, and by September, he began a two-year internship teaching at Kennedy High
School to earn his teaching credential through Sac State.
Roberts says he enjoyed being a student and wanted to earn more money, so he got his Master’s degree from Sac State in order to teach at the college level. After working at City College part time for a while beginning in 2005, a full-time position opened up and he got the job after the first interview.
Roberts, who also plays in a cover band and writes songs when he isn’t working, says he decided to teach at City College because it was such an important
part of his journey. He adds that, aside from teaching high school, he has never considered working anywhere else.
However, Roberts says he may want to go into administration one day, but that his biggest enjoyment comes from getting through to
struggling students.
“My passion and my love is in the classroom,” says Roberts. “As a teacher…you’re really working and pouring yourself into another person, so when you’re able to [help] the student who needs that and the student responds to that in a positive way, there’s just very few things that are more rewarding.”
