Chrizia Dela Rosa, San Jose math teacher and a California Teacher of the Year, makes sure every student’s name is said right

Within a day of meeting a new class, Chrizia Dela Rosa knows how to say every student’s name. She asks them to correct her if she gets it wrong.

It is a small thing, and it is the heart of how the Piedmont Hills High School teacher became one of California’s five Teachers of the Year for 2026, chosen from among the state’s public school teachers. The state singled her out for knowing and including every child and for teaching ninth graders that math, like volleyball, takes practice to build muscle.

“Today, I ensure that every student’s name is learned correctly by the next day, inviting corrections to prevent the discomfort I once felt,” she says in her Teacher of the Year profile. “This seemingly small act builds a foundation of belonging.”

Dela Rosa teaches math and leadership at the East San Jose school, coaches volleyball and since July has been its activities director, helping students run the events and campaigns that shape campus life for nearly 2,000 classmates. She was the East Side Union High School District’s 2025 Teacher of the Year before the state honor. Last month she was back on stage at the Santa Clara County Office of Education, this time as co-host of the county’s 56th annual Teacher Recognition Celebration.

“Just one year ago, I was sitting where they were,” she said. “It was an honor to stand by them and celebrate the incredible work each of them does for students every day.”

Tagalog, then basketball, then English

Dela Rosa was born in the Philippines and moved to the San Jose area when she was 6, just before kindergarten. She didn’t speak English yet. She struggled with the language and dreaded school.

She jokes that Tagalog was her first language, basketball her second and English her third. “I really learned how to play the sport before I was even fluent in English,” she said on the Leadership Messengers podcast in March.

The turning point was her second-grade teacher, Miss Tran, who already knew how to pronounce her name on the first day of school. “I for the first time did not feel invisible,” Dela Rosa said. Miss Tran made the classroom feel safe and showed her that “joy and work could exist together.” When the family moved away that year, Miss Tran wrote her letters over the summer.

“I always go back to Miss Tran because she’s one of the reasons why I became a teacher,” Dela Rosa told Fresno State. “School can be not just a place for learning, but a place where you can belong.”

Her family settled in Clovis when she was in third grade. Sports helped her find her place. At Clovis West High School she played volleyball and badminton and ran track before settling on basketball year-round. Her basketball team won multiple section titles. She is the youngest in her family, with older siblings who showed her the way to college, and she has at least 50 to 60 cousins. Her mother and her father each grew up as one of nine children.

“Education is important, and we have to be resilient,” she said of what her siblings taught her. “I became a teacher because no child’s future should be limited by zip code,” she says in her CATOY profile.

From Fresno State to Miami to San Jose

Dela Rosa earned a bachelor’s degree in liberal studies with a concentration in mathematics from Fresno State in 2012. She joined Teach For America and taught math at Northwestern Senior High School in Miami for three years, earning a master’s degree in education online from Johns Hopkins University in 2015.

“Teach for America was extremely selective,” she said. “Even though the program was super prestigious, Fresno State prepared me.”

She returned to the Bay Area and joined the East Side Union High School District. By late 2025 she had spent seven of her 14 years in teaching there. At Piedmont Hills she spent five years as a ninth-grade specialist and math teacher. She led the school’s Freshman Seminar Program, which blends financial literacy, academic support and social-emotional learning to help students make the jump to high school, and she mentored new teachers.

This year Fresno State’s Kremen School of Education and Human Development is honoring her with an engraved brick on its Teachers and Friends of Education Honor Wall. “Oh my goodness, that’s so awesome,” she said when she heard. “What an honor. Wow!”

‘I sell math’

Ask Dela Rosa what she does for a living and she may say she is in sales. “I sell math,” she said.

Her classroom runs like a system. She stands at the door before each period and greets every student by name. Class opens with a short online check-in in which students report their mood, whether they ate breakfast and how they slept. She reads every response, for about 160 students. The answers tell her what kind of day it will be. “How silly should I be in class? Or is it just straight business today?” she said.

If a student seems to be struggling, she doesn’t single them out. “I’ll just write on a post-it note and say, ‘Hey, saw your check in. You want to talk about it?’” she said. She leaves the note on the student’s desk before the lesson starts. Students usually write back on the note or send her an email.

In the first week of school she teaches the three parts of the brain that matter when math feels scary: the prefrontal cortex for thinking, the hippocampus for memory and the amygdala for fight, flight or freeze. Her husband taught her that lesson early in her career, and he gave her the joke that the hippocampus is the “hip campus.” When the energy in the room drops or spikes, the class takes a two-minute brain break, a number game, a high-five hunt or a slow breathing count, then gets back to work. Students can rewatch short video lessons she has recorded or ask her questions as she circulates.

She never calls on a student cold. Students write down an answer first, then compare it with a partner, so no one is exposed in front of the whole class. “I want them to feel confident and not exposed when they are being called on in class,” she said.

At the end of each day students rate their interest and give her feedback on her teaching. Every two weeks they take a test and then reflect on what they learned. She treats all of it as data to improve her lessons.

The goal is to break the idea that some people just aren’t good at math. “Unraveling these ‘I’m not a math person’ stereotypes gives them that confidence, and then by the end of the year, kids are having full-on conversations about math,” she said.

Caring, she says, is not the same as going easy. “Caring about somebody isn’t lowering their expectation,” she said. “It’s really holding that standard and expectation for them.”

Opening doors

As a Teacher of the Year, Dela Rosa is an ambassador for California’s teachers. She speaks up for recruiting and keeping teachers who reflect their students’ backgrounds and for a healthy work-life balance so teachers can stay engaged. She took the Breathe for Change wellness training, which her older sister Christine, also a high school teacher, had taken years earlier. “I’m worthy of this time for myself,” she said of what she learned. “I deserve to care for me.”

She has also used the attention to bring opportunities to Piedmont Hills. In one week in May, the school held its first-ever signing day for student-athletes moving on to compete at the next level, among them one of her volleyball players. The next night 39 students and family members went to a Bay FC educator appreciation night, where she was recognized on the field at halftime. The night after that, 80 students, coaches and family members went to a San Jose Earthquakes game.

“The California Teacher of the Year recognition opened doors,” she wrote afterward. “My job is to make sure those doors open for my students too.”

She raises money for her classrooms, too. A DonorsChoose campaign called “Leadership Starts Here,” to turn the student government room into a leadership hub with flexible seating, was fully funded at $5,883. “I love teaching Leadership because my students are the heart of our school community,” she wrote.

Five feet tall

Dela Rosa is 5 feet tall, “five one on a good day if I’m wearing the right heels,” and her favorite saying fits: “It is not the size of the dog in the fight. It is the size of the fight in the dog.” She recommends books like Adam Grant’s Give and Take, loves chocolate and boba, and her students know it. When they hold a boba fundraiser, they set up outside her classroom door on purpose. “It works every single time,” she said.

She shares her classroom and her school’s events on Instagram as @coach.chrizia. Her proudest moments, she said, come when former students return to tell her what they’re doing after high school or college.

“Teaching is who I am,” she wrote. “As a first-generation Filipina American, coach, mentor, and culture-builder, I strive to be the adult I needed when I was young.”

Source: California Department of Education; Santa Clara County Office of Education (2025, 2026); CATOY; Fresno State Today; Leadership Messengers podcast; Breathe for Change; Chrizia Dela Rosa on LinkedIn; DonorsChoose.