This school year, we lost and gained several teachers. While departments like Math had to cut some positions, departments such as English had spots to fill. One new addition to the English department is Mr. DeLucia (pronounced Duh-loo-sha) who teaches 9th and 10th grade English as well as 12th grade Satire.
While DeLucia is new to Granada, he isn’t new to teaching. This is his first year teaching high school, but he’s previously taught third grade for four years. “I taught at a small independent school called St. Margaret’s Episcopal in Orange County…and it was a lot of fun teaching math, reading, writing, things like that.”
But, he knew what he wanted to teach was high school. “…I always wanted to be with high schoolers. I initially wanted to teach history and that’s what I got my [degree] in…but, when my wife and I moved down to Orange County, I fell into teaching at a small private school.”
While DeLucia was in high school and college, he was deeply involved with sports and theater and he’s happy to be working with that age group again. DeLucia grew up in South Pasadena where he would go to two different high schools, South Pasadena Senior High School and St. Francis High School. He played football in high school which would spur an affinity for coaching later on. “I was a three-year letter and starter at both high schools, and I would eventually play at Puget Sound where I started as a true freshman.”
DeLucia was also a sports writer and anchor for his high school’s news program which is when he decided to go to school for broadcasting, before deciding on being a teacher. “I wanted to go into broadcast journalism. It wasn’t until I moved back home and I missed football, funny enough, that I started coaching and I realized that I really enjoyed what I was doing…I realized that teaching was the route that I wanted to go.”
While DeLucia has always enjoyed being involved with sports and journalism, his true love is for theater. “In high school, and throughout my childhood, I participated in plays and musicals, some of my favorite roles include the Purser from Anything Goes and Merriman in The Importance of Being Earnest…I continued to pursue acting in college, where I was in stage productions as a freshman.”
His love for theater extended past college as at his previous job he was an assistant director and stage manager for the school’s spring musicals. And in his free time, he tries to see as many musicals as he can with his wife. His involvement with theater and football would lead him to finally make the jump to teaching high school, stating, “I was ready to start working with teenagers again.”
Granada is the perfect place for DeLucia who was excited to join our school community. “I decided Granada was the place that I wanted to be because the people were very kind. Mr. Conover was great when I met him as well as the VPs who were very supportive and talked highly about the culture here. I knew…that [this was] the right place.”
DeLucia started college at the University of Puget Sound, located in Tacoma, Washington. He decided to move back to Southern California after his freshman year where he enrolled in Glendale Community College for two years. He eventually graduated from UC Davis. He initially went to college with plans of going into broadcast journalism, but, realizing those plans weren’t as certain in his mind, found his way to teaching. “I went back and forth between broadcast sports journalism…and just general news. One part of me wanted to be an anchor, [and] one part of me wanted to be a play-by-play analyst, so I didn’t really have an ideal goal or job, I was just letting life take me where it took me and it took me here.”
So far, DeLucia couldn’t be happier with his decision to go into teaching. His favorite part of the job is the bonds he gets to build with his students. “I love the relationships I get to build with students. I love seeing students grow, I love seeing people grow. I love seeing people that I have worked with, whether that’s in a tutoring capacity, in a coaching capacity, in a teaching capacity, where they end up later once I no longer see them every day.”
But, his least favorite part of teaching is, “Grading and organizing. I have hard-core ADHD so, the papers I am so prone to misplace. I have to keep a very tight organization style or else I lose it. I tend to say, ‘Oh, shoot I forgot to grade this. I graded two other things but I forgot to grade this one thing.’ So, that is what most teachers would agree is the most tedious part of the job.”
Beyond Granada, he’s happy to live in Livermore and he loves seeing how diverse our town is. “I love the diversity here. That is something that is not common in Orange County where we were before and other parts of the Bay Area…But the diversity of thoughts, of ideas, of cultures, of people is really great to see. I love it.”
Outside of teaching, besides theater, DeLucia loves movies, and sports, spending time with his family, and exploring in his jeep. “I enjoy going off-roading in my jeep, I like to keep the tires dirty that way. It’s kind of cliche but it’s something I enjoy [doing].”
While this may be Mr. DeLucia’s first year at Granada, he’s ready to make it a long career. He wants every student in his classroom and at Granada to have a good experience, no matter how he may be involved in their school journey. “There is not a single student who’s going to walk into my classroom or I interact with that I’m not going to immediately care about. I want to see every single person in my classroom or in this school succeed and be the best person they can…I feel like that is seldom said enough that teachers care and specifically I care a lot.”
