What am I doing here?

I have taught in public schools for 12 years now. I spent my first year working with elementary school students in the heart of a rough part of Houston, Texas. I taught students how to work with broadcasting equipment for our school’s morning television and afternoon radio broadcasts. Each kindergarten through fourth grade class in the school would spend a week with me and would produce a total of ten live broadcasts. The J. Ruth Smith Academy for Communications is a magnet school in Aldine Independent School District and was completely furnished with state of the art equipment in the two studios before I arrived in 2001. There were monitors, switchers, massive sound boards, monitors, digital cameras with TelePrompTers, studio lights, green screens, an anchor desk, lavalier microphones, and additional sound booths with high fidelity microphones for excellent sound quality. It was a wonderful introduction to the world of education.

I also taught computer and multimedia technology rotation courses where I had each class once every two weeks. I had the prekindergarten and kindergarten classes visit me early each morning after the television broadcasts had ended. Many of these classes were a part of the school’s one-way transitional bilingual education program. They spoke little to no English when arriving to my class, yet they would have the most profound effect on me and on the course of the remainder of my educational career. When September 11th came around, I had been an educator for around a month. Like most Americans, it greatly affected me.

I am from a small town in Texas called Splendora. I attended Splendora schools since I entered the second grade and graduated in 1997 as Salutatorian. I went on to attend Sam Houston State University and graduated in 2000 with a Batchelor of Arts degree in Radio, Television, and Film and a minor in Speech Communications. My dad attended the university after graduating from Splendora High School in 1975 but dropped out after my mom graduated in 1977. He quit school to support my mom, and I was born in December 1978.

It didn’t take long after I graduated for me to decide that I really didn’t want a career in broadcast journalism. My mom began attending North Harris Montgomery Community College when I was quite young and moved on to Sam Houston State University where she attained a Bachelor of Science in Education when I was attending Charles R. Dukes Junior High School. She began teaching prekindergarten classes when I was in high school. I’d considered education as a field before, but I’d thought that teachers were too severely underpaid to seriously consider teaching as a viable career path. Still, I was definitely raised in a household that valued education above all else and held teachers in the highest regard. On a whim, and after working in a variety of fields that failed to give me that satisfaction that I sought, I visited the Human Resources department at Aldine Independent School District and spoke with the Director Archie Blanson. He convinced me to interview with Principal Cleba Leschper and proceeded to carefully map out a route for me that avoided any toll roads.

I was offered the position, and my life was changed forever. I had found what I wanted to dedicate my life to doing. My students taught me more than I could ever imagine about life. I loved being a teacher and working to improve the lives of those children and empower them to be anything that they could dream of.

I decided at the end of my first year of being an educator that it was the most rewarding journey that I had ever undertaken. I would move back to Huntsville, Texas to pursue my Master’s in Education and work to be the best educator that I could be.

The City of Splendora is infamous in Texas for being one of the last bastions for the Ku Klux Klan. Members would stand on the side of US Highway 59 in full regalia and wave to passersby. They invited people who wished to stop and take photos onto a huge bus to peruse mementos and various paraphernalia that they could purchase to support the hate group and its endeavors. I suppose that many took them up on the offer.

The demographics of my hometown had begun to change during my time away, and the Hispanic population grew at a rapid pace. I decided to move back to Splendora and work as a teacher of English as a Second Language.

I taught in Splendora for ten years. I taught sixth grade writing, fifth and sixth grade bilingual for each subject, junior high English language arts and English as a Second Language as well as multimedia and technology, and a variety of high school courses that include: English for Speakers of Other Languages I and II, English as a Second Language, Introduction to Video Technology, Video Technology I, II, and Practicum, Audio Engineering, Computer and Multimedia Animation Technology, Digital and Interactive Media, and Business Information Management I and II.

I then spent a year as a Technology Integration Specialist at the Region 6 Education Service Center in Huntsville, Texas before moving into my current position as a sixth grade dual-language bilingual world cultures teacher in New Caney, Texas.

I don’t know what the future holds. I’d like to pursue a doctoral degree in education or philosophy and continue my studies in effective educational instructional strategies and bilingual education programs. I’d like to become a bilingual program director for a public school district with a diverse population. I’d like to speak more about technology integration and working with culturally and linguistically diverse students in a bilingual setting. Regardless what the future brings, I’d like to work with young people to improve their lives through the power of lifelong learning. I want to inspire them to achieve their dreams and to become great citizens of the world.