Andres Correa III said he’d never been arrested before early Sunday morning.
The arrest happened less than two blocks from his apartment at the 34th Street Plaza, where police accused the third grade teacher at Stephen Foster Elementary School of driving under the influence, possession of bath salts and resisting arrest.
After being released from jail on his own recognizance, he didn’t know what to do, so he looked it up and hired a lawyer.
Correa, who spoke to WUFT News late Monday night, characterized himself as a good teacher. None of his students have been held back, he said. His current students sent him multiple emails asking about his absence Monday — he was not able to respond to them to explain, he said, as the Alachua County School Board placed him on paid administrative leave.
Correa, who has worked at Stephen Foster since 2021, said he gets emotionally involved with the well-being and success of his students.
One of his students this year walks to school and he said he is frequently concerned for her safety, so he worked with the student’s mother to text back and forth when she leaves home and arrives in class. Another student, he said, came to school with the flu because he wanted to be there instead of resting at home. He said parents always tell him he has impacted their children for the better.
At the end of the year, he said, he and his students always cry.
“I didn’t realize as a teacher that you just have to let them go.” He said he believes he will lose his job because of the charges against him, which he refutes and on Monday pleaded not guilty. Correa worries about his students’ progress without him.
“I got a really great group of students this year,” he said. “That’s what’s really hurting me, that I might never see them again.”
He said he would send a message to parents soon about his leave of absence.
“If I messed up, I wish I’d messed up after the year was over,” he said. Now the earliest he thinks he could get back to students, if he keeps his job, is in March, which might be too late to help them pass state standardized tests.
Correa said he tries to be family as much as he tries to be a teacher to his students. This year, he said, a handful of his students are primarily Spanish-speaking and were placed with him because he is the only Spanish-speaking teacher at the school. He said he has worked to help them communicate with their English-speaking peers using Google Translate during class downtime and has started teaching other students some Spanish words at their request.
To his students, he said, “Don’t stop. Just because I’m not there doesn’t mean you can stop. Do what I’ve been telling you to do from home. I don’t want my mistake to hurt you.”
Correa has not yet been assigned a court date for his case.
