The Hitching Post interviewed a few teachers on campus that attended this school during their high school years. Here’s a look into what life was like for our favorite teachers when they were still student Mustangs.
STUDENT TEACHER MRS. BARNETT
Hitching Post: What years did you attend Mesa？
Mrs. Barnett: 2015-2018
Hitching Post: What’s the biggest difference you noticed between Mesa then and Mesa now?
Mrs. Barnette: Well, I mean, it’s different because I’m a teacher now, instead of a student, so I get to see the teacher aspect of how much we care about you guys and how we want to really encourage you to do your best. When I was a student, I didn’t think that teachers really cared that much, but we care so much. And it’s crazy because as a student, I didn’t really think that my teachers, I mean, I felt they cared, but I didn’t think that they were making all these things for me. Now I know we are doing all this stuff for you, because we care about you, we want you to do what you like and to know who you are, and I think that wasn’t really something that I recognized when I was a kid. So, yeah. That’s been one thing that I’ve noticed..
Hitching Post: Did you always think you would come back here to teach?
Mrs. Barnett: Yes. When I had left, I had determined that I wanted to be an English teacher, and that has been my goal since I left high school. I did like a senior project, which I wish they would bring back, where seniors basically do a bunch of research on schools, on, like, jobs, on, like tuition, and like these plans that they have after high school. And I think that really prepared me because I got to really know what I wanted to do, and I don’t think they get that opportunity anymore.
Hitching Post: How does it feel to be colleagues with some of the teachers who you were talking to?
Mrs. Barnett: It’s definitely weird. Like, Mr. Postiff and Coach Moreno, they basically saw me grow up. It’s so weird to see them in meetings and stuff. I feel like I shouldn’t be here in that way. Not in a bad way, it feels a little strange, but it’s cool, because I get to see them all the time.
Hitching Post: What advice would you give current students based on your own experience?
Mrs. Barnett: I would say to get involved as much as you can, and that’s either with sports, with clubs, with dances, even if they seem super mundane and dumb to do, I say just do it because, why not? Just go for it, you will never have an experience like this again. So it’s, like, you might as well make the best out of your experience.
Hitching Post: What was your personal favorite class? And who was the teacher?
Mrs. Barnett: Well, she’s not here anymore, but her name was Ms. Coyne in my Comp-Lit class. She was my favorite teacher because she would actually sit down with me and go through every single essay and be like, “You should change this, you should change that.” And she helped me grow as a writer. I felt like I also learned grammar from her, which wasn’t really taught in many classes. Whereas with her, we had like a lesson every single day in the beginning of class and I got to actually learn and remember the grammar rules, which helped me with my writing. Being in her class cleared up a lot of, like assumptions that I had about commas, and prepositional phrases. She was very helpful. To me, she was a good teacher.
MATH TEACHER MR. FRIEDMANN
Hitching Post: What years did you attend Mesa?
Mr. Friedmann: I attended Mesa all through middle and high school, and graduated in 2014.
Hitching Post: How has Mesa changed since you first started teaching here?
Mr. Friedmann: I first started teaching her four years ago, so it was like the fall of 2022. I wouldn’t say much has changed at all. It was the fall of 2022 so it was three years ago. And I think there was still kind of this, like, getting over COVID. Because a lot of things were not so active before. So it’s like you got to see the school you come from, I don’t want to say sad, but, like, sad point and then build it back up. Sure, but I would say I was like at the start of like the building was already kind of happening and I was like catching the like end of the building and the start of like this new kind of normal back to normal era.
Hitching Post: And how did that compare to when you were a student?
Mr. Friedmann: I’d say the biggest difference, honestly, is like high school and middle school were even more separate when I was here than they are now. Not to say that they’re together. You know, they’re still, they’re separated now. We didn’t have the engineering program, which I think is awesome. We had a different thing called Business Academy, and it was like a business program, but not an engineering program. So it was kind of like there were some things, but there were other things.
Hitching Post: When you’re a student here, did you always think you’d come back here to teach?
Mr. Friedmann: No…I didn’t know where I’d live. I didn’t know where I would teach. I thought it would be cool to teach here. I was really inspired by my ninth grade algebra 2 teacher, Mr. Kumar. He teaches at Newport Harbor now, and he was teaching one day and I was like watching him teach and I was like, oh my gosh, this is amazing. I want to be a teacher. And so I knew I wanted to teach math, like when I was in high school here, but I wasn’t sure where I would be a teacher. I didn’t know which college I wanted to go to, but I knew I wanted to go away for college. This job was one of my first teaching jobs. I taught in South Orange County at San Juan Hillside School, and then when this job opened up, it kind of was like too enticing. I was like, this sounds awesome to come back to Mesa.
Hitching Post: What’s one memory or tradition at Mesa that stands up to you?
Mr. Friedmann: There’s a lot of things, the tradition of having Mesa Maniacs at the football games, I think it’s so funny. But I was a Mesa Maniac and my brother graduated in 2009, he was a Mesa Maniac. So there’s this funny tradition and then there’s still Mesa Maniacs, which is a funny thing to do, go to the football game and paint your body. But it’s cool that we do it and not a lot of high schools do it. It is fun tradition that I’m glad that we still do. It’s kind of is like…my brother did that and I did that, and now these students are doing that. It’s cool. The other traditions, I don’t know, I like Club Rush. I remember being a seventh grader stoked on Club Rush, you know, 15, 17 years ago.
Hitching Post: What activities were you a part of as a student?
Mr. Friedmann: I played football just my freshman year, but I played basketball and baseball all four years of high school. I was freshman class president, my freshman year. But then, starting my sophomore year, we began a Journalism Club. It was a whole class that was zero period, and ASB was also during the zero period. So I had to pick, and I wanted to be in journalism. So I didn’t really love ASB after my freshman year. So I got to do journalism. My favorite English teacher Mr. Abuel was running journalism, so I was active in that for three years. By my senior year, I was the Editor in Chief of photography.
Hitching Post: Were you on varsity for any of those sports?
Mr. Friedmann: Yeah, I played varsity baseball three years, sophomore and junior year, and then I only played varsity basketball my senior year.
Hitching Post: What advice would you give to current students based on your own experience?
Mr. Friedmann: My advice would be to just to try and be a part of anything that you’re passionate about and go for it.
Hitching Post: What are some challenges you’ve seen students face over the years compared to when you were a student?
Mr. Friedmann: I would say that we are challenged with our phones. That’s like a way bigger challenge. Like, we had smartphones.
The iPhone came out in 2007 when I was in sixth grade. It was just way different, though.
Even when I was a senior, I got my first smartphone when I was 18. So when I was 14, I had a flip phone.
My 14 year old mind was able to develop socially with a flip phone versus a smartphone. I think that’s a challenge. I don’t think students shouldn’t have smartphones, but it’s just that navigating this world, socially, as you develop your mind with a smartphone is challenging to do it right. I feel like there were a lot of issues with your identity and people.
SCIENCE TEACHER MS. TRAN
Hitching Post: What years did you attend Mesa?
Ms. Tran: 2011-2017
Hitching Post: If you could describe Mesa in one word, what would it be?
Ms. Tran: Lively
Hitching Post: What was your favorite class at Mesa and who taught it?
Ms. Tran: Chemistry with Mr. Ryan, because we did cool experiments.
Hitching Post: What is one memory you made at Mesa that has stuck with you?
Ms. Tran: In 7th grade we had to do a science fair project. One of my classmates decided to do theirs on chicks (which was unfair cause they had money to do this) so the classroom had chicks in it and it smelled so bad and was so loud especially since I was right next to the pen.
Hitching Post: What was Mesa like when you were a student here?
Ms. Tran: There were different buildings like the lyceum and the front of the school looked way different. People also used their lockers more since we had to have our textbooks everyday. But, overall it still feels similar to how it is now.
Hitching Post: What keeps you motivated to teach here?
Ms. Tran: It’s a good school and school district. I am in the same classroom where I took Chemistry, AP chemistry, and it is where I did my student teaching. It feels familiar, it’s close to home, overall there are a lot of benefits job wise. Plus everyone is nice and supportive!
Hitching Post:What’s the biggest difference you’ve noticed between Mesa then and Mesa now?
Ms. Tran:The main difference is the newer buildings. They just finished middle school, clock tower, football field, and fencing when I was in 11th or 12th grade. That and everyone is always on their phone and everyone has an Air Pod in.
Hitching Post: What advice would you give to current students based on your own experience here?
Ms. Tran: Just try your best and try different things. I did not go into teaching right away. I was in the chemistry field for 4 years before transitioning to education. It’s important to explore different fields as your mind is always changing. A career is something that you see yourself doing for 20+ years.
History Teacher MR. TAYLOR
Hitching Post: What years did you attend Mesa?
Mr. Taylor: 1991-1997
Hitching Post: What was your favorite class at Mesa?
Mr Taylor: My senior year, Physics with Mr. Lloyd was my favorite class of all time. He was a very sarcastic teacher, and I didn’t think I was gonna like Physics at all. I definitely didn’t like my Chemistry class, but I had to take another science class my senior year, and I don’t know, it was something about his personality that I really liked. He was an interesting teacher. Every year they would ask him to do the graduation speech, and he said that he wouldn’t until the year that he retired. I never did find out if he actually did it that year. But he was a great teacher. So I think he got me interested more in the subject than the subject matter did by itself.
Hitching Post: What has changed the most at Mesa compared to when you were a student?
Mr. Taylor: Well, the campus has undergone a lot of transformation in terms of the physical buildings. The old Lyceum is gone, where we used to have our theaters and plays, and now we have this state of the art brand new theater. The old shop buildings are gone. We used to have a wood shop drafting. There was even an auto shop that was here at one point. That’s gone. Driver’s Ed used to be taught on our campus. That’s how I got my driver’s permit by taking the driver’s ed course. I don’t think we teach that anymore, but all those buildings are gone now and we have some great new facilities in place. I mean, the old track was a little rough around the edges. We have a state of the art field now, which looks great, and they’re doing a lot of beautification on the other sports facilities. They’re redoing the tennis courts, which I think is great. The brand new 50 meter pool, you know, it’s about 15 years old now, but it is heads and tails nicer than what we used to have with the old L shaped pool where a fiberglass was falling off, so that was a good upgrade.
Hitching Post: What activities were you a part of as a student?
Mr. Taylor: Sports, lots of sports, mostly. I played water polo, I did swimming, and I also wrestled for two years. And every other activity I was involved in…it would be off the record.
Hitching Post: What school activity had the biggest impact on you?
Mr. Taylor: I think we used to have a class that was exclusively for seniors. It was called Communications, and it was taught by Miss Butler, who was also the photo teacher at the time. Every senior wanted to take that class. But only so many actually made it in, because there were only so many sections available. So everyone as a junior was clamoring to try and get into that class as a senior. And it just was really an interesting concept in the way it was being taught. It was a very open environment where kids were sort of getting out of the day to day, typical academic things. We’re sort of just, you know, talking about real life things, talking about personal things, but I think it was really good for helping kids to kind of grow on an emotional level, and that’s just something we just don’t have here anymore. So that was just a really cool experience having that class on campus. Then the other thing, I guess it goes back to the earlier question, we used to have a farm, so that means that I heard about this. At first, it was called the farm complex. I don’t know if it’s still called that or not. But that’s because there was literally a farm. Cows, chickens, horses, goats, and you could take agricultural science as a class. So that was another cool thing that we had going on, because if you were having a rough day, honestly, like, you went out there and, like, pet a horse or something, you felt better. You know what I mean? It was therapeutic. Yeah. So, that’s something I kind of miss having around here.
Hitching Post: If there was one thing you could bring back from Mesa when you were a student, what would it be?
Mr. Taylor: I think the Communications class would be the thing I would want to see back more than anything else. There was just really something special about that class. You were right kind of at the end of high school, and you were getting ready, you were on the precipice of getting out into the quote unquote “real” world. I think better prepares you just as a young adult to kind of take that step and make that lead forward, just because of the sum of the subjects that we would talk about and some of the kind of life skills that it would teach us. Sort of practical application for the real world type stuff, and I don’t think we do enough of that. It’s super fun. I loved it.
Hitching Post: What was your favorite memory as a student here?
Mr. Taylor: My junior year, we won CIF for Boys Water Polo, and that was a huge moment for me and my teammates. We’ve been playing together since we were in junior high school, and that was sort of the pinnacle of success for us. That’s probably the thing that stands out the most to me.
Hitching Post: Based on your experiences at Mesa , what words of advice would you give to students here?
Mr. Taylor: Something I heard when I was younger was “being a big fish in a small pond” or something, and Costa Mesa High School is a small pond. What you realize is when you get out it’s a whole ocean out there. If you didn’t think you were the big fish and that you didn’t fit in, or you weren’t the one that was standing out, that’s fine. You won’t see 99% of the people that went to the school, probably ever again. You’ll find out that the things that you were worried about while you were here are really inconsequential, and I think if kids could figure that out before they leave and move on, it would actually make their experience here better. Just understand that other people’s opinions don’t matter. You’re probably a lot more accepted than you think, things aren’t always as bad as you think they are.
Hitching Post: Why do you think Mesa is special to you?
Mr. Taylor: This place has held so many memories. I went here for junior high, and high school, so obviously I had six years of being a student here. I made just a ton of memories that stayed with me. So I was asked to come back and help coach aquatics, It really drew me back. Since I felt the connection to the school and, we had experienced success in the water polo program, I wanted to come back and try and help give back so that the kids that were there at the time could maybe have some of that same experience or create some similar memories for them, because it meant so much to me. Through the coaching, I got interested in teaching, and I actually turned down two other jobs that were full time to take a part time job here with the hope that I would be offered a full time position here. Fortunately, it worked out that way.
Hitching Post: Did you always want to teach here?
Mr. Taylor: I just found that through coaching was so much more, I guess I found that coaching was so much more than just teaching kids how to play a game. They were dealing with a lot of things, and I was doing my best to try and help them navigate life as a teenager and some of the things that they had to deal with. I think that that’s what kind of made me realize that I could probably continue to help more if I was, you know, in the classroom or I had more to offer being on the pool deck. And I loved history. I have always been a history nerd. It just seemed like a logical thing. Having spent time on this campus as a coach, I realized that, yeah, this would be a great place to come back and teach, and why wouldn’t I want to teach you? I love it. I’m glad I’m here, and I hope to finish out my career here.
Written by Carmen Lohora-Young and Kelsey Garduno.
