This is the 2nd time that Trini Garza High School, headed by principal Dr. Macario Hernandez wins national Blue Ribbon school. In 2018, the school won National Title I Distinguished Award as captured in this earlier post on the school's accomplishments that delves into why they are so successful: Dallas early college campus singled out as one of the nation’s top schools for low-income students

That piece references the importance of having teachers that come from the community. Dr. Hernandez himself is a member of this community. This aligns with a growing research literature that points to the power of community-based teachers to educate the children in their own communities.

You did it again, Macario. None of this happens without excellent leadership—and to do so in the throes of a pandemic is no small thing. 

I hope you get a promotion. You're amazing! 

Felicidades! Congratulations!

-Angela Valenzuela

4 Dallas-area campuses named National Blue Ribbon Schools

The coveted honor recognizes schools for high performance and closing achievement gaps.

Kathlyn Joy Gilliam Collegiate Academy was just recognized as a 2021 National Blue Ribbon School for the first time since 2014. It's one of four Dallas-area campuses that received the National Blue Ribbon School honor Tuesday.(Emil Lippe / Special Contributor)

Four Dallas-area campuses received National Blue Ribbon School honors Tuesday, recognized for their high performance and work to close achievement gaps.

The schools, among 26 receiving the status in Texas, were Dallas ISD’s Trinidad “Trini” Garza Early College High School at Mountain View and Kathlyn Joy Gilliam Collegiate Academy; Mesquite ISD’s Porter Elementary School; and Christ the King Catholic School in Dallas.

The program selects campuses based on either how well students perform on standardized tests or how much progress they make in closing achievement gaps among student groups.

Students at Garza and Gilliam typically earn college credit while completing their high school diploma as well.

The majority of those at Garza will be first-generation college students, principal Macario Hernandez said. Among its 431 students, 88% are Hispanic and about 8% are Black. More than 85% come from families that are struggling financially.

The honor is “validation for all the hard work of our teachers and our students and our parents,” Hernandez said. He added that the status is a celebration for the teachers and students who persevered despite the challenges brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The school staff values students’ home culture, racial backgrounds and lived experiences, he said, which allows teachers and students to build relationships that transform the experience for the entire campus community.

“It’s a family that really builds on each other’s strengths,” Hernandez said. “Humility and valuing and respecting and working with people with compassion and empathy can go a long way.”

Gilliam principal Gayle Ferguson Rodgers said the award is proof that a school can perform at high levels despite its at-risk population.

A majority of its students, most of whom are Black or Hispanic, also come from low-income families.

“This award is a celebration of everyone’s efforts as we do our mission here at Gilliam, which is to have college access and success for all,” she said.

Ferguson added that being named a National Blue Ribbon School “wasn’t a goal,” but that the school’s community only focuses on delivering on its mission every day.

The staff’s commitment to the school’s vision “Every Child. Every need. Whatever it takes.” became abundantly clear for Porter Elementary Principal Leeann Englert when she began working at the Mesquite school. She credited parents for pushing the school to meet high expectations.

“The campus exudes this vision in every conversation they have and in every decision they make,” she said in a statement. “Everyone is deeply invested in the success of our children.”

The schools join more than 9,000 others that the National Blue Ribbon Schools program has recognized in the past 39 years.

“I commend all our Blue Ribbon honorees for working to keep students healthy and safe while meeting their academic, social, emotional, and mental health needs,” U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona said in a written statement. “In the face of unprecedented circumstances, you found creative ways to engage, care for, protect, and teach our children.”

The four local campuses are among 302 public and 23 private schools honored across the U.S. on Tuesday.

The DMN Education Lab deepens the coverage and conversation about urgent education issues critical to the future of North Texas.

The DMN Education Lab is a community-funded journalism initiative, with support from The Beck Group, Bobby and Lottye Lyle, Communities Foundation of Texas, The Dallas Foundation, Dallas Regional Chamber, Deedie Rose, The Meadows Foundation, Solutions Journalism Network, Southern Methodist University and Todd A. Williams Family Foundation. The Dallas Morning News retains full editorial control of the Education Lab’s journalism.

Valeria Olivares, Education Lab Reporting Fellow. Valeria is a reporter for The Dallas Morning News Education Lab focusing on higher education. She was born in El Paso, but was raised across the border in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. She has previously interned at The San Antonio Express-News and The Texas Tribune. She loves internet culture and green tea-flavored sweets.

valeria.olivares@dallasnews.com ValeriaOliEsc valeriaoliesc

Congrats to Dr. Marnie Curry for her stellar ethnography: “Authentic Cariño: Transformative Schooling for Latinx Youth"

 Friends:

I am very excited to have received Dr. Marnie Curry’s just-published book titled, “Authentic Cariño: Transformative Schooling for Latinx Youth (Teachers College Press, 2021)." It arrived just in time for my birthday which is today, December 28th! For ease, I provide the abstract, book features, and reviews below.

Authentic Cariño provides the much-needed counterstory to an otherwise pervasive trend in public education of subtracting resources from our youth as a manifestation of inauthentic, deficit-oriented, superficial caring, or cariño.

University of California Santa Cruz research professor, Marnie Curry, demonstrates, through this rich, ethnographic account of Molina High School (pseudonym) just how possible it is for an entire school serving Latina and Latino youth to be additive, instead of subtractive, caring for students in ways that resonate culturally, enhancing their lives, well-being, and prospects for the future.

Thank you, Dr. Curry, for asking me to write the book's Foreword, honoring my own ethnography of a Houston, Texas high school named Seguin (pseudonym), namely, Subtractive Schooling: U.S.-Mexican Youth and the Politics of Caring.

My plans for my college classroom is to teach these texts side-by-side and hope others will consider doing so, as well, with the idea of conveying the breadth of policy and practice options, as well as ethical choices, that school officials and practitioners make in the context of teaching our nation's culturally and racially diverse student body.

In this vein, a third book to consider is Drs. Lesley Bartlett and Ofelia García's ethnographic account from a New York school titled, Additive Schooling in Subtractive Times: Bilingual Education and Dominican Immigrant Youth in the Heights (Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press, 2011). This text provides a much-needed focus on an immigrant community's empowerment. 

What these three texts share is that they are also critical institutional ethnographies that examine how schools interface with their respective communities. There may be other such educational ethnographies about which I am unaware. This is what readily came to mind. 

Not unlike Subtractive Schooling, Authentic Cariño is translatable to other diverse contexts comprised of youth whose cultures, languages, and community-based identities are not only different, but also deemed as insufficiently worthy as the basis for a relevant and meaningful curriculum or pedagogy that successfully averts, what I term, "subtractive cultural assimilation."

As Curry's ethnography, in particular, suggests, it doesn't have to be this way. It doesn't have to be this way at all. Quite the opposite, as the contours, dimensions, and manifestations of authentic cariño are vast. Let me count the ways...

Congratulations to Dr. Curry for her meticulous, inspiring ethnography of an outstanding high school that encourages a powerful vision and a path forward for U.S. public education.

-Angela Valenzuela

P.S. I just got this edible arrangement from my daughter at the door! Best birthday ever!

Abstract:

As the population of Latinx students grows in U.S. public schools and our nation seeks to address systemic inequities, racism, and xenophobia, this counternarrative provides inspiration to those wishing to reinvigorate schools and build a more caring and just world. Authentic Cariño documents the innovative practices, successes, and struggles of a full-service community high school serving mostly low-income Latinx youth in an economically depressed California city. Based on 4 years of qualitative research, the author examines how educators, families, and community members established and sustained a social justice school that immersed youth in authentic cariño—a holistic blend of familial, intellectual, and critical care. By nurturing students’ moral, social, personal, and academic development, the school produced college-bound graduates ready to be agents of change in their own lives and in their communities. This case study synthesizes and extends scholarship on color-conscious, healing-centered educational care and offers rich portrayals of praxis that illuminate how schools can equip marginalized youth to thrive. All royalties from this book will support Molina High School and a college scholarship for urban youth.

Book Features:

• Advances a fully elaborated model that specifies three fundamental dimensions of care: familial, intellectual, and critical.
• Provides an in-depth account of a high school that successfully institutionalized authentic cariño schoolwide.
• Advocates for “college and community readiness,” conveying to students how additional schooling would enable them to become community change agents capable of contributing to collective uplift.
• Offers insights into the structures, processes, and complications that arise when a school commits to authentic cariño as a path to promote engaged learning and social transformation.
• Shows what is possible when educators in partnership with local communities dare to care deeply and widely for Latinx youth.

Reviews:

“Now more than ever, we must infuse authentic cariño into our schools to press forward toward a pluralistic, multiracial democracy where ‘liberty and justice’ prevails for all. For this reason, I genuinely welcome Authentic Cariño: Transformative Schooling for Latinx Youth and hope that readers will be inspired to use it as a resource to advance additive, as opposed to subtractive, schooling.”
—From the Foreword by Angela Valenzuela, professor, University of Texas at Austin

"Not since Jeff Duncan-Andrade's powerful work on critical pedagogy and youth participatory action research have we seen the concept of cariño used to reinvent and revitalize pedagogy for students who have traditionally been marginalized in our schools. Although directed toward Latinx students, this work will benefit all students! Curry has provided us with a masterpiece.”
—Gloria Ladson-Billings, professor emerita, University of Wisconsin-Madison and president, National Academy of Education 2018–2021

"We are a society that has experienced massive trauma and deep uncertainty. As we move into a post–COVID-19 world, our schools will need to cultivate deep healing and caring relationships. Marnie Curry’s Authentic Cariño offers us a clear and compelling roadmap about how to respond to collective trauma and create 'networks of care.' Curry’s book offers a fresh lens for us to envision how teachers can build partnerships based in love and care. This book is a must-read for teachers, researchers, and practitioners searching for a fresh and deeply authentic model for transforming schooling. “
—Shawn Ginwright, professor of education and Africana Studies, San Francisco State University

“The kind of engaged, grounded, and community responsive scholarship found in this book is sorely needed in the research community. Through the voices of educators, youth, and community engaged in their own beautiful struggle, Curry illuminates what we can and should be doing in schools to grow, maintain, and protect the wellness of our children and our communities.”
—Jeff Duncan-Andrade, professor, San Francisco State University

Dallas early college campus singled out as one of the nation’s top schools for low-income students

So very proud of my UT Cultural Studies in Education doctoral student, Macario Hernandez, for this extraordinary achievement.  Mr. Hernandez is principal of Dallas ISD's Trini Garza Early College High School.  His early college campus was just recognized by the Texas Education Agency as "one of the nation’s top schools for low-income students."  As you can read for yourself below, he was one of two schools statewide that received this recognition.

Aside from being a Title I principal extraordinaire and a "hidden gem" himself in DISD, Macario is also researching "homegrown teachers."  These are educators that are from the community that have worked in their communities—sometimes for decades—as teachers.  He himself is both a homegrown teacher and principal and is a testament to the power of this model of which I myself am an advocate [Keyword "GYO," "GYO Teachers," and "NLERAP" on this blog for prior references to this national agenda for change.]

"G-Y-O works!  It save lives," he expressed, as a featured speaker at a national Grow Your Own Educator Summit held here in late January in Austin, Texas.  As mentioned in this Dallas Morning News article that correctly notes his and the school's philosophical underpinnings in caring relationships, people can indeed work together in unison and improve their children's lives while enhancing the quality of relationships in the larger community, as a whole.  Relationship-building, respect, and caring have to reside at the core of one's intention and practice.  Keeping schools small also helps.

Felicidades, Macario!  Congratulations!  You are the embodiment of the very GYO dispositions that all of our leaders and teachers need to have if we are to be positively oriented in a culturally relevant and attuned manner to the wishes, hopes, and desires of our communities.  

You have at Trini Garza what every kid on the planet wants.  To be cared for, valued, and loved in a culturally relevant, genuine, in-it-for-the-long-haul, way.  It's additive, not subtractive.  It's about extending students' resources and potentialities rather than about subtracting them, turning on its head the demonstrably wrong-headed project of assimilating youth in a culturally and linguistically eviscerating way. 

We are all so incredibly proud and happy for you and the many lives that you generously and graciously touch!

Angela Valenzuela

c/s

DISD hopes to 'break the cycle of poverty' with early college academies at nearly every high school

Dallas early college campus singled out as one of the nation’s top schools for low-income students

by Corbett Smith| Staff writer

It is fitting that Macario Hernandez’s office at Dallas ISD’s Trini Garza Early College High School has a window that faces one of the school’s main thoroughfares. If a student or teacher needs a word, it’s easy to flag down Hernandez, the school’s principal, and pop in for a chat.

Those connections — built with students, parents and the Oak Cliff community — are what Hernandez points to when asked to describe his campus’ successes.

"Relationships are the foundation for everything we do on this campus," he said. "Being able to make a connection with that student, it's profound because you're vested in that student, vested in the community."

Located on the Mountain View College campus, Garza was selected by the Texas Education Agency as a National Title I Distinguished School, one of only two schools in the state to receive such a designation for the 2016-17 school year. The other is Houston ISD's charter Project Chrysalis Middle School.

The award, presented to Hernandez and three of his teachers by the National Title I Association earlier this month at a conference in Philadelphia, honors high-poverty schools that excel in student performance or closing achievement gaps. One of DISD’s first early college high school efforts, with a student body that’s 86 percent socio-economically disadvantaged, Garza was one of 34 schools across the nation to be praised “for exceptional student performance for two or more consecutive years.”

For the past three years, Garza has received all seven distinctions — indicators that a school is outperforming its peers — awarded by the TEA. The school’s performance on state assessments across all subjects was double the state’s average last year.

“I think that Trini Garza is one of the hidden gems in DISD,” trustee Audrey Pinkerton said during an award assembly at Mountain View’s performance hall on Monday. “And now, the secret’s out.”

When Hernandez spoke to the assembly on Monday, he was quick to remind the audience that they were the engine for the school’s achievements.

“This is about you, all the time,” he said.

The statement isn’t just puffery. It matches his collective, bottom-up approach to leadership, crafted over a decade as a volunteer community organizer and activist for Dallas Area Interfaith and administrative stops across the district.

“To me, this award isn’t about one person or one school,” Hernandez said before the event. “It’s about a community of learners. Relationships we have with students, teachers, parents, relationships we’ve built with the college partner, with the college president — that’s what’s really made us successful at this campus. Outside of that, it’s about valuing the stories and lived experiences of the people who go here.

“I grew up in Oak Cliff, so my job isn’t as much a position to me, as a calling.”

Senior Brandon Leal left the Kimball feeder pattern to apply at the school, intrigued by the dual-credit model that allows students to graduate with a high school diploma and associate’s degree.

He’ll head to the University of North Texas in the fall, with 60 college credits under his belt.

Leal credited the school’s small size — just 434 students — with fostering a sense of togetherness, with students banding together to help one another meet high expectations of college coursework.

“It’s a really good learning experience," Leal said. "You’re asked a lot of tough questions, since this is based on both college and high school. But it’s helped me get ready.”