Cholla High School

Nicole may live in the northeast side of Tucson, but she has no qualms about driving over to the west side of town to teach at Cholla High School. She’s been making the commute for over a decade, and loves making it so much so that she doesn’t plan to leave Cholla any time soon. Her students are her biggest reasons for making the long commute. 

“The kids are well worth the drive,” Nicole said. “I really enjoy working with them.” 

Nicole loves teaching within the International Baccalaureate program. She teaches IB Environmental Science and IB Chemistry and is the IB cast coordinator and the IB service learning coordinator. 

“It’s really rewarding,” she said. 

At home, Chris is a devoted husband and father of two kids, three dogs, and a cat. But at work, he has to wrangle up a different kind of chaos – theater.

This is actually Chris’ second stint at the westside school. After initially teaching at Cholla in 2007-2012, Chris came back in 2023. 

“There’s something special about Cholla,” Chris said. “There’s something special about the community out here and the kids. They really want to learn to be creators. And being here on this campus and having the opportunity to teach them how to be creators is exciting.” 

As a teenager, theater was where Chris found himself and a safe space to connect with others. Now, he’s trying to provide the same atmosphere for his students. 

Grace is a first-year teacher at Cholla, but already she’s making her mark. In a room surrounded by art and positive affirmations, a small group of students spend their mornings in Grace’s class every day and play their guitars. The music strolls out of the room as if it were a studio. And that kind of environment is what Grace hoped to be able to provide. 

The 10-year Tucson Unified educator actually found herself working at Cholla after working at a couple of other schools but had wanted to be closer to home. Funny enough, although she didn’t graduate from Cholla herself, she is a Tucson Unified product and attended Cholla for one year when she was in high school.