Christine Velasquez

I am a first-generation, Latinx college graduate with a Bachelor's Degree in Business Marketing and currently working towards earning my master’s in education at Texas A&M. I’ve been a fourth-grade math and science teacher for four years, and for the past two years I was selected to serve as the effective practice specialist by my principal at Lewis Elementary, located in Southeast Houston within the Houston Independent School District. I was placed at Lewis Elementary when I joined Teach for America in 2016. After completing my first year in the corps, I was selected as the Beginning Teacher of the Year for my campus. Upon completing my two-year commitment with the TFA corps, I decided to continue working at my placement school because of my deep desire to make a lasting change. I was able to assist the school in transitioning out of its status as an Improvement Required campus to a Meets Standards campus; I increased math STAAR scores across the 4th grade level. I contributed to a 20% increase in the “approaches standards” level for the 4th grade Math STAAR and about 10% increase across 3rd-5th math grade levels over the past four years. As the effective practice specialist at my campus, I coached STEM teachers in implementing best practices in the classroom in order to help maintain and increase our academic success at Lewis Elementary. I gave feedback, planned for effective math lessons across different grade levels, and modeled lessons for my fellow teachers. I was also responsible for creating an e-portfolio that displayed my caseload, which included teacher resources, reflections, data, etc., and was shared with all of the teachers at my campus. My e-portfolio exceeded the expectations of the district’s role requirements, earning me the HISD Career Pathways Bright Spot Award. In November 2019, I was selected as HISD Teacher of the Month out of all teachers within the 280 campuses in the district. In summary, my passion is fighting for educational equity. I am proud of what I have accomplished so far at Lewis Elementary, and I am committed to continue collaborating with all instructional leaders to provide the finest learning experiences for our scholars.