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Texas News
Socorro ISD honors the top 8 campus teachers
Socorro Independent School District, SISD, honored the 2023 Elite 8 Teachers of the Year during a reception.

Four elementary and four secondary school teachers were selected from the 49 campus teachers of the year.

Elsa M. Griego, Rosario Quiroga, Arleen Parada, and Brenda Ornelas represent the elementary educators. Phillip Chase, Adriana Rodriguez, Melanie Tobias and Eric J. Williams represent the secondary educators.
Many of FWISD’s next round of new teachers could be a long way from home. Here’s why.
As officials in the Fort Worth Independent School District look to replace the large number of teachers leaving the classroom, they’re turning to a new source for help: educators from overseas.

Fort Worth ISD officials began recruiting international teachers for hard-to-fill jobs last year. This year, they’re stepping up those efforts, seeking more educators from outside the United States for subjects like math and science, as well as bilingual and special education.
Education Destination: Coppell ISD focuses on the future for ESL and Bilingual learners
Coppell ISD’s Director of ESL and Bilingual Programs, Patricia Dawson, recently shared insights on the district’s language programs and their commitment to academic success for emergent bilingual learners.

With 29 years of educational experience, Dawson has had the opportunity to teach in the classroom, write curriculum, serve as an assistant principal, principal, Director of ESL/Bilingual, LOTE and Early Childhood, and other opportunities.
Texas must pay teachers more, train them like doctors, task force finds
Teacher residency programs – similar to those for doctors – could bolster training for educators and stem turnover.

Along with boosting teacher pay and working conditions, Texas should take a cue from medical professions by funding a residency program that helps new educators prepare for the classroom.

These ideas — and several others — were proposed by the state’s Teacher Vacancy Task Force in its long awaited analysis, published Friday. The group said Texas should take multiple approaches to stem the loss of educators and to recruit new ones.
‘I’m New’: Award-winning filmmaker reflects on his experience as an ESL student in Texas
Marlon Rubio Smith, a UT-Austin student and filmmaker, reflects on his experience being the new kid from Mexico City in his award-winning short film.

When Marlon Rubio Smith moved from Mexico City to Houston in 2015, he found a safe haven in watching movies — action, adventure and especially films about superheroes. 

While Smith was learning a new culture and language, he also had to navigate being the new kid in an American public school. Since Spanish was Smith’s first language, he was also in the English as a Second Language program at his school. 
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National News
‘I can be an example’: After 107 years, a Latina will lead a national group of school principals
Middle school principal Raquel Martinez can relate to the farmworker families in her Pasco, Washington, community because she came from one herself. 

Principal of Isaac Stevens Middle School, Martinez is the first Latina to be elected president of the National Association of Secondary School Principals’ Board of Directors in the organization’s 107-year history. 
AASA 2023: How can superintendents work to expand leadership pipelines?
Eliminating barriers to mobility and rethinking prep programs were among suggestions district leaders offered at the National Conference on Education.

Has the role of the superintendent grown more difficult in recent years? Are there too many great superintendents considering leaving their roles and moving on to something new?

If the near-unanimously raised hands and affirmations of a meeting room packed with superintendents in the Henry B. González Convention Center was any indication, the answer to both questions is a resounding “yes.”
The diversity disconnect: 6 ways schools can hire teachers who look like their students
Teacher diversity matters more than ever because students of color are now the growing majority in US public schools—but nearly 80% of teachers are white.

Teacher diversity has been called a priority by plenty of K12 leaders, but many districts have not yet put significant numbers of teachers of color into their increasingly diverse classrooms.
Adolescents Need SEL That’s Designed for Them. Here’s What That Looks Like
Social-emotional skills provide adolescents with valuable tools to navigate the tricky world of tweens and teens. But schools tend to focus much more on social-emotional learning in the preschool and elementary years than the latter grades.

“SEL can be a forgotten domain” of learning in adolescents, said Stephanie Jones, a professor of child development and education at Harvard University, in a recent webinar hosted by the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.
Thousands of kids are missing from school. Where did they go?
A new analysis found an estimated 230,000 students in 21 states whose absences could not be accounted for

She’d be a senior right now, preparing for graduation in a few months, probably leading her school’s modern dance troupe and taking art classes. 

Instead, Kailani Taylor-Cribb hasn’t taken a single class in what used to be her high school since the height of the coronavirus pandemic. She vanished from Cambridge, Massachusetts’ public school roll in 2021 and has been, from an administrative standpoint, unaccounted for since then.
Las Tienditas
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