What Young Angelo Needed: Teaching My Younger Self and Every Student Like Him

by Mr. Angelo Sandoval (CEO & Founder of EmpowerED Coaching, Inc.)

As an educator and consultant, my social media feed is full of catchy reminders about teaching,  but one commonly occurring post always hits differently:

“Be the teacher you needed when you were younger.”

Every time I read it, I think about young Angelo, a Mexican-American kid growing up in South Stockton, raised in a chaotic and uneducated family just trying to survive. I think about the boy who used humor to hide his academic insecurity. I think about the student who wanted desperately to learn and be intelligent but didn’t know how to process failure (and other important emotions)… because no one ever taught him how.

And when I reflect on the last 21 years of my teaching career — the emotional coaching, the culturally responsive practices, the routines, the sports psychology lessons, the relationship-building, the mindset work, I can see clearly:

Much of what Mr. Sandoval did for his students…are the exact things young Angelo needed from his teachers.

When Failure Felt Like a Threat

In Rebuilding Students’ Learning Power, Zaretta Hammond reminds us that the brain is built to learn and that mistakes and setbacks are information, not character flaws.

That’s true.

But young Angelo didn’t know that.

Emotional regulation didn’t exist in my home. We knew happiness, anger (lots of anger), frustration (which led to more anger), excitement… but not reflection. Not metacognition. Not coping.

So failure wasn’t feedback.

Failure was a threat.

A danger.

A reason to shut down.

I’ll never forget a moment in 7th grade, probably the clearest memory I have of academic panic. I was sitting in class staring at the Physical Science exam that felt impossible. There were questions on the page I had never seen before. My heart raced. I knew none of it. My mind was filled with panic. I felt stupid, frustrated, and defeated before I had even tried.

When I finished. Angry, embarrassed, overwhelmed. I walked to the front of the room, placed my mostly blank exam on the stack, walked back to my seat…

and I threw my pencil at the teacher.

That was my fight-or-flight response. Not disrespect. Not defiance.

Just a kid who didn’t know what else to do with the feeling of failure.

I had to direct my anger somewhere else because it was too much for me. And in my family, frustration and anger were always directed outward, at something or someone. (Sorry, Mr. Parker 🫶🏽)

That moment wasn’t about the exam. Although I blamed him and directed my anger towards him, it wasn’t about Mr. Parker.It was about a child with no tools to process frustration, mistakes, errors, or failure.

Young Angelo needed someone to tell him:

• Your intelligence isn’t defined by this moment.

• Struggle is part of learning.

• Your emotions make sense and you can manage them.

• You are an important member of this classroom.

• This classroom is a place where you can make mistakes and learn from them. 

He needed what Mr. Sandoval later worked hard to become.

When I Became the Teacher I Needed

Years later, as an experienced teacher, I started noticing my students doing the same things I once did: shutting down, withdrawing, joking their way out of discomfort, getting angry to hide insecurity, believing they “just weren’t good” at a subject.

I saw myself in them. And I felt responsible for breaking that cycle. So I made emotional resilience part of the curriculum.

What started as a Sports Psychology elective became part of every class I taught. We watched clips of athletes and other performers discussing mindset, perseverance, discipline, and failure. We talked about emotional control. We rewrote the stories students told themselves when work got hard.

We repeated mantras like:

• “Failure is fertilizer.”

• “Mistakes are part of the learning process.”

• “Struggle is the workout your mind needs.”

And slowly, I saw their thinking change. Students stopped saying, “I’m bad at this.”They started saying, “I’m working on this.” or “I’m getting better every day.” They approached writing tasks, essays, exams, and projects like athletes preparing for tough opponents — with mental framing, preparation, and confidence.

I wasn’t just teaching content. I was teaching young Angelo everything he never learned.

The Classroom Culture I Needed

Students learn best when they feel:

• Seen

• Safe

• Supported

• Valued

• Emotionally grounded

• Challenged with care

That’s why “Culture” became a cornerstone of the RISE UP classroom management framework I later created. Because without culture — without belonging, trust, and psychological safety — rigor means nothing.

Classroom culture is what young Angelo needed most:

A place where mistakes weren’t shameful.

A place where effort mattered more than being right.

A place where adults cared about the child, not just the subject.

A place that recognized the emotional weight students from communities like mine carry every day.

Why I'm Writing This

I wrote this piece for two people:

1. Young Angelo

A kid who was smart, thoughtful, creative, and capable — but didn’t always believe it.A kid who needed emotional coaching as much as academic support.A kid who needed adults who understood the world he came from.

2. Every student living that same story today

Especially in communities like the one I grew up in. South Stockton is a strong and culturally rich community — a community that has also been historically marginalized, under-resourced, and overlooked. I proudly represented South Stockton as a teacher and always committed to giving students the education they deserved, especially multilingual learners, students of color, and students navigating trauma.

I also wrote this for teachers who want to understand their students more deeply, who want to create culturally responsive classrooms, and who want to build learning environments that strengthen both intellect and identity.

Because when I say:

“Be the teacher you needed when you were younger…”

I don’t say it as a slogan.

I say it as a commitment I made to young Angeloand every student raised in similar circumstances.

A commitment I’ve spent my entire career keeping.