There Is No Teaching Without Learning

Ben Hernandez is being honored as a Champion of Change for his service to education. 

Through 14 years of service in the Houston Independent School District (HISD) I have learned to maintain one doctrine. Simply stated it is that there is no teaching without learning.  I cannot say I am a teacher if students are not learning.  This credo drove me through my lessons in the classroom, kept me up late planning and preparing, pushed me to ensure my students met my high expectations.  My work was defined by learning.  And my students learned.  However, I soon realized that my students' learning was only part of the equation.  I realized I had to be a part of that learning as well. 

There is no teaching without learning and as a teacher I had to also be a student.  After teaching elementary PE for 4 years, I transitioned into teaching kindergarten.  As a kindergarten teacher I learned a tremendous amount.  For five years I was a student in that room learning about workstations, phonemic awareness, developing number concepts, one-to-one correspondence, and of course routines routines routines.  I often say that it was in the kindergarten classroom where I learned to teach.  After 5 years as a kinder teacher I became a 5th grade math teacher.  Though it was those 5-year-olds that taught me, it was with my 5^th graders that I had the most success.  As a 5th grade teacher my students soared.  My instruction resulted in my students outperforming the 5th grade students of previous years and previous teachers on the state standardized assessment.  Fifth grade math passing percentage increased from 76% to 95% in my first year alone.  The following four years my students demonstrated similar achievement ranging from 95% to 100% passing.  This dramatic growth in math resulted in my school receiving a Blue Ribbon Award for significant gains in math achievement.  And yet, I attribute my success as a 5th grade teacher to my continued learning and constant development.  Again, without learning there could not have been any teaching.

Understanding that the key to effective teaching was learning I made the tremendously difficult decision last year to move out of the classroom and into professional development.  Because of my success as a teacher, I felt it incumbent upon me to teach other teachers.  In my working with HISD leadership to create a new appraisal and development system a new role in professional development was born.  This new role was given the name of Teacher Development Specialist (TDS).  The job of the TDS is to observe teachers and provide meaningful (non-evaluative) feedback for the purpose of improving instruction.  This was a major shift in the work of professional development in our district.  The TDS is to provide job embedded professional development targeted directly at instruction and tailored to fit individual teachers. 

My move into the TDS position has allowed me to impact many more students in HISD by working with teachers to improve their instruction.  There is no teaching without learning.  And now after 13 years of teaching elementary students, I have the charge of teaching teachers 

Ben Hernandez works in Professional Support and Development for teacher instruction

Preparing Young Minds for Challenge

Armando Orduña is being honored as a Champion of Change for his service to education.

I come from a region of the country filled with great pride; pride in our industries, our food, our music, our innovations. It has been my career-long attempt to reflect that tradition of pride in my life through our children. I did not consciously choose to serve my community through public education but like so many others was called to it.

My father immigrated to Houston from his home country of Mexico in search of opportunity. He came to work. My mother came to Houston from her small, Texas coastal town for opportunity, as well. She came to work. When they found each other, they found their own piece of the American Dream. Together they founded a family. In that family, they found purpose. Through their work, their children found purpose.

Through my work with young people, I see my own purpose mirrored in their eyes. In my early efforts in community outreach, I delivered early childhood literacy and math programming to eager minds unable to cross city and social boundaries for themselves. In later years, I welcomed these same children as older students into my classroom to scaffold their learning as they proceeded toward their next level of knowledge and understanding. As I travel through the streets of my city, I view the opportunities that lay before them in the form of badly needed transformation and reform. This inspires me with much hope as I see my own purpose in equipping these young minds for the great challenges that lay ahead.

And through it all, I remind myself, these great accomplishments yet to come, were contributed to by the love of two hopeful individuals; two people in love with each other and purpose. 

Armando Orduña trains high school students for careers in Education through the only teacher-preparation magnet program in Houston, Texas

Building Long Lasting Relationships

Silvia Rodriguez Macdonald is being honored as a Champion of Change for her service to education. 

It is an honor to be nominated to the White House Champions of Change program. This program will provide me with the opportunity to share ideas in order to improve educational programs and communities across the country.

I appreciate the multi-cultural and multi-ethnic diversity of our Montgomery County, Maryland community where the demographics have changed greatly in the last ten years. Born into a multilingual and multi-cultural family, I promote the richness that other cultures and ethnic populations share with the predominant community.

Our community reflects the needs of the new populations making Montgomery County their home. The school system is stretching the available dollars to meet the educational, housing, health and other needs of the total community; however, as is the challenge for all public school systems, more funding is needed to properly tackle the existing situations.

As a first generation Cuban-Spaniard-American, I was faced with the many challenges that our Hispanic students face today. I was raised by a divorced mother, who was a public school teacher, in a Spanish speaking household. I entered Kindergarten, as an English Language Learner, in a school that had no supports in place to help me learn the English and academic language needed to be successful in school. Fortunately, I had a wonderful Kindergarten teacher who took an interest in helping me and my family. 

I moved to Montgomery County, Maryland in middle school in 1979. After graduating from a Montgomery County public high school, I attended the University of Maryland where I earned a B.S. in Consumer Economics. During this time, I assisted my mother in opening her own real estate firm and focused on educating first time home buyers. As I worked with many families, I recognized the need to educate the whole family not just the parents. Many of these families were Hispanic immigrants trying to achieve the American dream of home ownership. They were hardworking, English Language Learners and their children were struggling, just as I had. My desire to help these children led me to return to school to earn my Masters of Arts in Teaching English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) at Johns Hopkins University.

At first, I taught in schools that were very diverse and had large populations of ESOL students. Then in 2005, I accepted a position with the Montgomery County Public School system (MCPS) as an ESOL Teacher at Lois P. Rockwell Elementary School in upper Montgomery County, where the community was just beginning to diversify. In the six years since I have taught there, Rockwell Elementary and the surrounding community have seen tremendous growth in diversity with the ESOL population growing ten-fold and the Hispanic population more than quadrupling. 

As our student population continues to diversify in our county, our schools need to respond to their changing needs in order to provide them with opportunities for success. Although, my school’s population has seen tremendous growth in its diversity, our Hispanic students and students with Limited English Proficiency (LEP) continue to meet the required proficiency percentage needed to meet the Maryland School Assessment Overall Adequate Yearly Progress standards. The success of these Hispanic and LEP students is directly related to the positive climate and culture of our school. As a teacher and a member of the school’s leadership team, I am able to affect positive change in our school. We make it a priority to educate the whole child by providing opportunities for success in their academic and social-emotional learning. We use the nationally recognized Project Wisdom Character Education program and the Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS) system to teach students how to make good choices and be rewarded for such choices. We build long lasting relationships with the students and their families by building a strong community where they feel safe and proud to belong.

In addition to my work at Rockwell, I am able to influence the success and advocacy of our county’s LEP students through my leadership on the Montgomery County Education Association ESOL Labor Management Collaborative Committee (MCEA/ESOL LMCC). This is a collaborative committee between the union, MCEA and the ESOL Division Administration of MCPS.  As the Chair, I lead the committee to discuss and bring attention to the many issues that our ESOL teachers face that ultimately affect the education of our LEP students. I work closely with the leadership of MCEA and the administrators in MCPS’ ESOL Division to resolve these issues and advocate for the education of our LEP students. I also collaborate with and present to the larger MCEA/MCPS LMCC, which includes the top level administrators of MCPS, to address unresolved issues and monitor the positive progress of the committee.

Ultimately, by working with my ESOL students, their families, the community, the union, and the school system, I have the opportunity to influence the lives of these young children, our future leaders. By teaching them English language skills, exposing them to their new culture and encouraging them to be proud of their native culture, and emphasizing how they are great contributors to the daily life of our community, I am affecting a positive change in their lives and the lives of their families. Hispanic and ESOL students benefit from their success and advocacy by becoming productive members of their communities.

Together, we can bring changes and improvements to our communities. We can increase academic achievement, professional development, economic opportunities, stability and safety for Hispanic and ESOL students. Together, we can effectively bring positive changes for the benefit of the total community.

As a teacher and leader, I am dedicated to improve our community and the lives of Hispanic children through my daily work. I live in Montgomery County, Maryland with my husband, Sean and my daughters, Alexandra and Victoria. In addition to my work, I enjoy spending time with my family, traveling, and volunteering.

Silvia Rodriguez Macdonald is an ESOL teacher at Montgomery County Public Schools in Maryland