I can do this

Leroy Montoya came from a single-parent home and a poor West Denver neighborhood, and when he took his first stab at college he was not ready.

One day soon, Montoya hopes to begin working with children at an inner-city school—and he hopes to get them to appreciate the chance at an education that is in front of them, and, maybe, help keep them from making some of the mistakes he made as a young man.

“I want to give back to the community I grew up in, where I came from,” Montoya says.

Montoya is a product of the Urban Teacher Partnership program at Metro State. He completed his semester of student teaching during the fall at Merrill Middle School. Then he turned his attention to the process of finalizing his teaching license and looking for—gulp—a job.

It’s been quite a journey for Montoya, now 37. As a boy, he lived on Ninth Avenue, surrounded by poverty.

“A lot of us grew up with that great government cheese,” he says.

While still a student at West High School, Montoya found himself at Metro State as part of a program aimed at helping struggling teenagers.

“That program is what saved me from dropping out of high school,” Montoya says.

He graduated from West, enrolled at Metro State and found that he couldn’t handle the freedom college offered.

“I proceeded to flunk out and lose my financial aid,” Montoya says. “My mom said, ‘You can still live here at home, but you need to get a job.’ Instead of going and getting a real job, as I put it, I went and joined the Army. That was a good learning experience, definitely.”

Montoya did four years of active duty and four more in the National Guard. And he came back to the Auraria Campus, taking classes at both Community College of Denver and the University of Colorado Denver and even working at the theater in the Tivoli, where he met his wife, Andi.

Ultimately, he re-entered Metro State, earning a bachelor’s degree in behavioral sciences in 2005. As he searched for what he wanted to do with his life, his family urged him to think about becoming a teacher. Their reasoning was simple: He loved history and political science.

So he returned to Metro State—again—set on earning his teaching license. He found the Urban Teacher Partnership, designed to prepare instructors for inner-city schools.

“The first class I took, one of the teachers talked about it,” Montoya says. “I said, ‘Hey, this sounds kind of cool.’”

When he got his student teaching assignment at Merrill, he was thrilled. He worked with cooperating teacher Steve Eriksson, who allowed him time to get comfortable with the students, then turned him loose.

“The first time up in the classroom, you’re kind of nervous, sweating and everything,” he says. “But then it was boom, boom, this is easy—I can do this.

“It was easy and it was fun.” Now he’s ready to keep doing it—in his old neighborhood, hopefully, and for a long time. March is the month when DPS accepts applications for the following fall, and Montoya’s is in the stack.