Educators Rising cultivates highly skilled educators by guiding young people on a path to becoming accomplished teachers, beginning in high school and extending through college and into the profession.
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Congratulations to our 2020 Competition Winners!
 Featured Speakers
| JosĂ© Gonzalez is in his twenty-eighth year of teaching and currently works for Tucson Unified School District teaching the Culturally Relevant (CR) American History: Mexican American Perspective and CR American Government Social Justice Perspectives classes at Tucson High Magnet School. As a practitioner and a student advocate, JosĂ© anchors his instruction by implementing a Xicanx Critical Race Theory, simultaneously interweaving a humanizing pedagogy, which at its core is grounded in an indigenous epistemology. He operationalizes this indigenous epistemology to foster and facilitate within his student’s a strong sense of identity (ancestral and academic) and student’s voice infusing a self-discipline approach to life. JosĂ© received his bachelor’s from Emporia State University; a master’s from Northern Arizona University and is currently pursuing his doctorate in Educational Policy Studies and Practice at the University of Arizona. |
José Gonzalez
Opening Program Keynote Speaker
March 5, 2020 from 1:00-2:00pm
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 Mandi Torrez Keynote SpeakerMarch 6, 2020 from 11:30am-12:30pm |
Mandi Torrez is the 2020 New Mexico Teacher of the Year. She has been teaching for ten years, eight of which have been at Placitas Elementary School. Ms. Torrez is a member of the National Council for Teachers of Mathematics and the National Education Association. She has served on the Placitas Elementary Leadership Team since 2017, and was nominated for the Golden Apple Excellence in Teaching Award in 2017.
Her first work with children was in college, while volunteering at an English as Second Language after-school program in a low-income housing community. Ms. Torrez’s volunteer service was her first look at the achievement gap and the support needed for minority students. A central component of Ms. Torrez’s teaching is her focus on cultural diversity. She has worked to highlight cultural awareness at Placitas Elementary by organizing annual celebrations for National Hispanic Heritage Month, Native American Heritage Month and National Black History Month.
Prior to teaching, Ms. Torrez was a journalist for eight years. She attended the University of Colorado at Boulder, where she received a Bachelor of Science degree in Journalism. Ms. Torrez also attended Wheelock College in Boston, MA, where she received a Master of Science degree in Integrated Elementary Education and Special Education. |
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