The University of Texas at El Paso’s College of Education plans to launch a social media campaign next week focused on the impact teachers have on children. Its goal is to interest and inspire more high school students to consider a K-12 teaching career.

The college’s leaders knew they needed to promote the profession after the pandemic, which generated a lot of stress and anxiety among teachers because of health, safety, social, emotional and technological issues. That unease affected relationships among colleagues, students and their families, and led to burnout and decisions to leave the profession.

“I hope this campaign will change the narrative,” said Clifton Tanabe, who marked his five-year anniversary as dean on July 1.

Tanabe said COVID-19 negatively affected the college’s recruiting, and the number of UTEP’s education graduates dipped. He hoped the campaign, which starts Monday and includes a , would alert prospective students to how fun, exciting and important it can be to work as a K-12 teacher and, hopefully, prepare for that future at UTEP.

However, the enrollment problem went beyond UTEP and COVID. The American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education stated that U.S. colleges awarded fewer than 90,000 undergraduate degrees in education in 2019 compared to 200,000 a year in the early 1970s. The study also found that from 2012 to 2022, the number of people who completed a traditional teacher preparation program fell by 35%. Another key figure is that students who earn science or mathematics degrees have fallen by 27%.

Tanabe said that the numbers of UTEP students who earned bachelor’s degrees in education consistently fell during the eight years prior to his arrival, but had settled to about 200 graduates annually. The numbers started to go up but then COVID brought them back down to pre-pandemic levels. He anticipated that the bilingual campaign, which ends in December, would trigger at least a 50% increase in a few years.

Raiz Federal Credit Union provided financial and creative support of the project. Raiz hired El Paso-based CultureSpan Marketing to produce a 30-second commercial and three 15-second advertisements that will be delivered to audiences through Twitch, Facebook, YouTube and Instagram, social media platforms that cater to teenagers and their friends and family.

Mike Matthews, CultureSpan president and chief creative officer, said that the videos address the profession’s rewards and challenges, and incorporate the human element behind the decision to become a teacher. He expected the message to resonate with viewers.

The 30-second spot involves four borderland educators who imagine their lives as teachers while a voiceover talks about what it takes to be a teacher and ends the commercial with a challenge.

“The journey isn’t for everyone, but it can be for you,” the narrator said.

One of the actors was El Paso native Dulce Falcon, a 2010 Del Valle High School graduate who earned her bachelor’s degree in education from UTEP this past May. The former Miner Teacher Residency Program participant said that the video shoot was fun because it allowed her to reflect on her seven-year journey to become a teacher.

The 31-year-old mother of four said she hoped her participation would inspire and motivate others to follow their dreams and to not give up. She called her higher education journey hard and expensive, but worth it.

Falcon, the third featured actor in the video, recalled how the director instructed her to pretend to be excited because she was thinking about something important that she wanted. She just thought of herself as a teacher.

“That was easy for me because I really was excited,” said Falcon, whose first day as a fourth-grade teacher at Desert Hills Elementary School was July 11. “I wasn’t pretending. Those actually were my emotions.”

As part of the campaign, CultureSpan will track the data to learn where the message succeeds and where it needs to be tweaked. The team also will compile the information from those interactions to create a better digital profile of students who might want to become an education major.

“I think that’s really going to benefit UTEP’s College of Education to really get a deep dive understanding of where these potential students are and help to cultivate them at an early stage, and to notice when there’s that want or desire to become an educator, and just really stoke those flames,” Matthews said during a Zoom interview.

Susana Aguirre, the college’s director of strategic engagement and planning, said the campaign wants to reach those who might want to become a teacher, or any job in the education field to include learning coach, counselor or administrator.

Starting salaries for first-year teachers in the El Paso region range from $50,000 to $60,000 and could be augmented with bonuses and stipends based on what and where the person teaches.

“We know that (teenagers) are not always sure about what they want to do,” said Aguirre, the project’s lead coordinator. “They are not sure if teaching is the correct field for them so targeting those that have that passion will help them make the right decision.”

Alejandro Yu, Raiz vice president of marketing, said his company understands the critical role teachers play in the region’s success. He hoped the campaign would attract more people to want to earn an education degree from UTEP and add to its legacy.

“This partnership is a crucial way to help others to find their purpose,” Yu said.

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Among the goals of the recent LatinX Edtech Summit: Bridging the Digital Divide was to connect local educators and emerging technology entrepreneurs who could collaborate on an idea that could generate a long-term impact that would benefit underrepresented students and communities.

About 140 K-12 and higher education teachers, administrators, business leaders, technology investors and representatives from national organizations with vested interests in all levels of education gathered for the second annual summit on June 16, 2023, in the Region 19 Starlight Event Center, 6650 Continental Drive, near the El Paso International Airport.

Whether in the main hall or in the exhibit area, summit participants talked about technology and its application. Buzzing among the participants was Joseph Sapien, CEO and executive director of the STTE (Success Through Technology Education) Foundation, the event’s lead organizer.

Sapien helped found STTE, an El Paso-based nonprofit that works to develop, deploy and advance educational programs to enhance the chances that tomorrow’s students are digitally literate and ready to join the 21st-century workforce.

“A year, two years, five years from now, because of those connections, education and technology are going to be exponentially advanced,” he said while exhibitors pitched their tech products in the background. “The technologies that are here are very fascinating. I’m looking forward to seeing what happens because of this event.”

Pew Research Center reports from 2021 and 2022 showed that while many Hispanics use smartphones, not as many own computers or have internet access to save money. This digital exclusion means that more than half of the Latino workforce is not ready to be part of the digital economy. The summit is among the ongoing efforts to enhance digital equity in Latino households, especially those in rural communities. These plans include access to affordable broadband, which experts believe will lead to the improved digital skills needed for today’s tech jobs.

Eddie Rodriguez, executive director of CREEED (Council on Regional Economic Expansion and Education Development), one of the summit’s sponsors, said the main thing his organization wanted to stress was a continuous commitment to higher education to achieve economic success.

Rodriguez said that a high-quality public education should provide students, regardless of their socio-economic background, with a launching point for a productive life.

“It’s going to take every shoulder to the wheel to effectively get us to that destination that will increase the trajectory of our economic opportunity,” Rodriguez said.

The CREEED official moderated one of the summit’s panel discussions about the importance of technology in rural areas. The panelists were Veronica Vijil, Rosy Vega-Barrio and Oscar Troncoso, who are superintendents of the Fabens, Tornillo and Anthony independent school districts, respectively. These small districts serve rural communities on the western and eastern edges of El Paso.

The trio noted how the pandemic sped up the use of technology at the K-12 level, and quickly raised the competency of teachers for virtual instruction, but it also revealed the need to expand internet access to allow greater communication between schools and students and their households.

Troncoso said that a side benefit was that parents, who often were Spanish speakers, could use their child’s laptop to access language applications to learn English. He also said that students who mastered the technology became eligible for more college scholarship opportunities to include some for competitive Esports at New Mexico State University.

The trio touted how artificial intelligence (AI) programs could be powerful tools to help their students to improve their English proficiency, especially in written communication, and to give a voice to students with disabilities by enhancing their social skills.

Jacob Fraire, president of the ECMC Foundation, another summit sponsor, said he expected to hear new ideas from Latino leaders in education, technology and entrepreneurship about how tech-enabled learning could benefit Latino students, which is a growing community across the state and the country and one that traditionally underperforms at the post-secondary level compared to white students.

According to recent U.S. Census Bureau data, the population of Texas passed 30 million in 2022. Of that, 49.3% of the population age 17 and younger are Hispanic. The same data showed that only 70% of Hispanic adults earned a high school diploma and only 18% received a college degree.

Fraire said ECMC, a Los Angeles-based organization, works to improve higher education and career opportunities for underserved populations throughout the country that do not traditionally graduate from colleges and universities.

“We’re hoping to bring to light those ideas of how we can do better,” Fraire said. “In order for us to serve the Latino community more effectively, we have to be intentional about our saying that in this community, we intend to serve explicitly. That’s why we’re here today.”

One of the event’s keynote speakers, Sarita E. Brown, co-founder and president of said she was at the summit because Excelencia wants to work with institutions that reach Latino students, serve them well, and propel them into the workforce and society.

Brown said her organization is well aware of El Paso’s strengths and potential, and that the summit highlights the region’s ability to combine human capital with practical and tactical solutions. She lauded its residents, who for decades were underrepresented and underestimated, because they made the most of their bilingualism and biculturalism, especially as first-generation college students. Now the state, the nation and the world see the “vibrance” in the area because of UTEP being a top-level academic research university and the expansion of El Paso Community College. The student populations at both of those institutions are heavily Latino.

She said the summit was an opportunity for academic leaders to listen to entrepreneurs and technology developers about cutting-edge ideas that could benefit their students. She said that her question for every educator and tech person in the room was how they plan to efficiently connect with each other to benefit Latinos, who will make up a larger percentage of higher education students in the future.

“They’re definitely looking at challenges, but are rising to meet them,” she said.

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Effects of COVID-19 continue to be felt in classrooms throughout the community as veteran teachers deal with students who are more disruptive, destructive and disrespectful than in past years, and teachers attribute the lack of civility – at least in part – to the pandemic.

A district administrator and teachers union representatives said that this difficult behavior is going on throughout K-12, but for this story El Paso Matters focused on kindergarten, a foundational grade where students learn the basics from sounds, shapes, letters, colors and numbers, to counting, simple science, and how to function in a classroom to include respect for others and their space, and basic hygiene such as hand washing and covering coughs and sneezes.

This is an important issue for educators who must prepare these young minds with a proper base from which they will tackle future social and academic requirements to include state-mandated tests in third grade and beyond.

Leah Miller, owner of the Counseling Center of Expressive Arts in El Paso, said she regularly sees young clients who exhibit similar behavior and added that it often stems from anxiety, and misbehaving is how they cope and communicate.

“A lot of times when kids have anxiety, they act out in ways that we don’t typically understand because they can’t articulate to us that they’re anxious,” said Miller, a licensed professional counselor who specializes in play therapy. “That’s when you see impulsive behavior.”

Kindergarten teachers and staffers from area districts shared similar stories of students who are unprepared for a structured learning environment and unwilling to conform despite the teachers’ best efforts. Congratulatory stickers, positive reinforcement and meetings with parents, counselors and campus administrators have not affected most of these children who continue to act up well into the spring semester.

The teachers, who did not want to be identified for fear of retaliation, said they noticed early in the fall 2022 semester that more students than usual were having a hard time adjusting to school. A teacher education leader at the University of Texas at El Paso said that she was aware of the issue and suggested to one district a way to help, but her offer was rebuffed.

Instructors described students – mostly 5-year-olds – who cursed, overturned chairs, disrespected others and their property, and delighted in ripping down learning charts and decorations in the classroom and along the hallways. They also depicted others who exhibited moodiness and such dangerous tendencies as biting, using scissors to cut the clothes of other students, and running out of their classrooms or cafeterias and into the campus parking lots.

The frustrated teachers acknowledged that they have used every tool in their instructional arsenal, but have made little to no headway in many cases. They lamented a lack of support from campus leaders, who ask teachers to be more understanding of the youngsters, and parents, who do not deliver on promises to change a child’s behavior or deny their child has a problem in the first place.

“Sarah,” a teacher for more than 10 years, said she had previously experienced an occasional student with anger issues, but was surprised to find three disruptive students in her class for the fall 2022 semester. By February, that number had grown to seven, almost a third of her students.

“I’m constantly putting out fires,” she said figuratively. “It’s very draining. The whole situation just makes me sad.”

While some teachers said this year’s circumstances have made them consider changing the grade level they teach, the campus or their professions, others talked about going home after a tough day and researching other ways they might be able to connect with their students “who need extra love.”

The teachers did not want to say how many student referrals (reprimands) they had written this year. Each referral involves a lot of documentation of who did what and when. At that grade level, the consequences for referrals range from lunchtime detention, loss of privileges such as participation in a class party, and in-school suspension.

One teacher suggested that districts needed to do more to address student mental health like hiring behavioral therapists on every campus.

Miller, the professional counselor, said that it is possible that the parent/caregiver gave the child technology during COVID isolation because the adult needed to work, and they wanted to keep the child quiet. She said the abundance of screentime meant that children did not have enough time for unstructured play, where they learn social behavior and how to solve problems. Some examples of unstructured play are artistic or musical games, construction of clubhouses with boxes and blankets, and the exploration of the kitchen cupboards.

In “Screen Time and the COVID-19 Pandemic,” an article in the March 2023 edition of PlayTherapy Magazine, Sara Loftin, a licensed professional counselor, echoed much of Miller’s theory in regard to adults using technology as a babysitter. The article, which cited numerous studies, pointed out that long periods of screen time will negatively affect a young child’s development of language and social skills as well as their abilities to solve problems, think creatively, or learn to deal with their boredom. The article goes on to state that as screen time often is an individual activity, the child user does not learn about impulse control or empathy in social settings.

While it is late in the academic year, Miller said it was important for teachers to build relationships with their students. It is her experience that good relationships deter poor behavior. She also suggested two ways the teachers could work with the students with issues. They included situations where the teacher will acknowledge the students’ feelings, communicate the limit to the bad behavior, and then offer an acceptable alternative. There also is a 30-second burst of attention where the teacher focuses on the child for 30 seconds and then tells the student that he/she needs to get back to work.

“Maria,” another established teacher, lamented her students’ lack of relationship skills. She said one of the main differences between her current and past classes is that this group likes to bicker with no interest in resolutions. She has 20 students in her class and about half have “issues.”

“I can’t teach,” she said. “I just try to manage their behavior.”

Maria has called numerous parent meetings, but each parent seems dismissive of the problem. In one case, a student began to tear down educational materials from a classroom wall and the mother just watched passively.

Maria said she has asked her school’s counselor and administrators for help, but they are always busy.

El Paso Matters reached out to representatives from the region’s big four school districts regarding this issue, but the only response came from Diana Mooy, Ysleta Independent School District director of the Department of Student Services.

Mooy, a former teacher and school administrator, said that the concerns raised are common among kindergarten and first-grade teachers, and that YISD was aware of the concern. She said her district trains teachers to learn what in-school or out-of-school factors trigger the negative behavior. The district director reasoned that COVID-19 eliminated many opportunities for this generation of kindergarten students to socialize with peers on play dates, or learn how to behave outside the home.

She said the district provides its teachers – and parents – with various support programs, and social emotional learning curriculum and discipline management techniques to help the child before things escalate. She added that YISD’s K-12 teachers are supposed to set aside 30 minutes per week to talk with students about self-regulation and relationship building to give them the necessary tools to manage their emotions in a healthy way.

Mooy said that district kindergarten teachers had submitted about 200 referrals as of February, which is a number consistent with past years. The district registered 2,309 kindergarten students during the 2022-23 academic year.

She encouraged any teacher in her district to contact her to discuss strategies and interventions, and added that she would be willing to talk with campus administrators to get the teachers the support they need.

Norma de la Rosa, president of the El Paso Teachers Association, was among the union representatives who acknowledged that they had received more calls this academic year from teachers who requested guidance on how to handle students who are more unruly than usual. They tell the teachers to follow their districts’ protocols and to document incidents as much as possible. In worst-case scenarios, she tells teachers to file a Chapter 37 of the Texas Education Code that allows them to remove disruptive students from their classrooms.

“I tell them to do what they need to do,” de la Rosa said. “You’re not to be a punching bag.”

The union leader knows that campus administrators do not want teachers to file charges against students, but they should be ready to go up the chain of command if necessary to the district and the Texas Education Agency. She said the district’s attitude is that if a teacher needs to write a referral, they should write the referral.

“Right now the kids know there are no consequences,” de la Rosa said. “The districts need to change that mentality.”

Teachers want parents to take a more active role in eliminating their children’s misbehavior, as opposed to a concept that they hear more than they would like, the children are the schools’ problem from the day’s first bell to the last.

“Savannah,” a parent who works in the schools, said she noticed misbehavior in her child’s class but was not as concerned because the class had a veteran teacher, and her son continued to do well academically. Early in the school year, campus leaders assigned a teacher’s aide to the classroom and brought in one of the district’s behavioral therapists to work with the disruptive students, who eventually were separated into different homerooms. One of the students left the school.

“I thought (the teacher) was as effective as she could be,” said Savannah, who added that the teacher assured her recently that the rest of the class had caught up to where it should be academically. “I’m happy to know at this point of the year that all things are straightened out and that the class is in a better place than where it was at the beginning of the year.”

Alyse C. Hachey, co-chair of UTEP’s Department of Teacher Education, said last September that the college offered the services of its award-winning early childhood education faculty expert to provide special professional development to all El Paso Independent School District teachers and administrators who served pre-K and kindergarten students.

“The district refused to have administrators trained and so turned down help from UTEP faculty,” Hachey wrote in an email. “We stand willing to help. The districts’ need to let us.”

In a February email, Hachey said she had not pursued the matter.

Sarah said one possible solution would be for the state to put less focus on academics at that level and focus more on social emotional learning.

“At their age, it’s not hard to be overstimulated,” Sarah said. “We need to teach them how to share and play together.”

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Inclusive and equitable institutions that use diversity, equity and inclusion in their hiring benefit everyone, and a recent directive from the Texas governor saying otherwise is “grossly misconstruing” federal anti-discrimination law, a higher education diversity official said.

Paulette Granberry Russell, president of the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education, came out strongly against a Feb. 4 directive from the office of Texas Gov. Greg Abbott that called it illegal for state agencies and public universities to use diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in hiring decisions.

In a directive,  that DEI has been used in recent years to favor some demographic groups “to the detriment of others.” The directive states that employment decisions should be based on merit without additional DEI consideration.

“The memo and its claims are ridiculous and beyond an attempt for state government overreach,” said Granberry Russell, a licensed attorney who served as senior adviser for diversity to the president of Michigan State University before her retirement in 2020.

DEI initiatives have been used in the United States since the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s. Their goals are to create discrimination- and harassment-free workplaces for people from different backgrounds, and to give them opportunities for professional development.

Granberry Russell said that inclusive and equitable institutions benefit everyone, and that the recent memo from Abbott’s office is twisting federal anti-discrimination laws to fit his and his administration’s political agenda and to silence efforts to advance equity in the U.S., which has struggled with its founding promise of justice and liberty for all.

“They are just one more step in a broader assault on the basic underpinnings of diversity, equity and inclusion, terms that some have sought to turn into dog whistles because they have not   bothered to understand the basic history of America and the principles that can set it on a brighter path forward,” she said.

Granberry Russell said the 1964 Civil Rights Act, to include Title VI and Title VII, Title IX of the Education Amendments Act of 1972, the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, and the Vietnam Era Veterans’ Readjustment Assistance Act, and federal regulations that interpret these laws, prohibit discrimination, including discrimination based on race, gender, ethnicity, national origin, disability and veteran status.

Officials at the University of Texas at El Paso issued a brief statement in response to an El Paso Matters request for comment about how this DEI issue will affect the campus. Several of its websites speak to the institution’s commitment to DEI because of how it benefits students.

“The university is currently reviewing the matters addressed in the letter,” the email read.

As of Feb. 10, 41 of the 44 faculty and executive employment opportunities asked applicants to include statements of contributions to, commitment to or promotion of DEI and sometimes access or accessibility.

An entry for an assistant professor in social work asks candidates to describe how they promote DEI and accessibility through their service, instruction and research/scholarship, and how the candidates would begin or continue to implement such relevant practices at UTEP and the Department of Social Work.

In a request for applicants for an assistant professor of chemistry position, the entry reads “To sustain and enhance our commitment (to a culture of inclusive excellence), UTEP hires and invests in faculty who value our culture of care and the success of students from diverse backgrounds. As such, we request a “Broadening Participation” statement of how you would approach contributing to that culture of Inclusive Excellence.”

UTEP had the highest percentage of Hispanic tenured faculty among the country’s largest research universities, according to fall 2021 data from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System. IPEDS showed that 31% of UTEP’s tenured professors were Hispanic, which was more than double the next closest institutions surveyed. Several universities had at least 10% of their faculty identify as Hispanic.

As for other institutions in the state, Texas Tech University officials ordered last week the elimination of DEI consideration in their hiring practices after a conservative group questioned how the institution’s biology department rated candidates on their commitment to DEI as part of the hiring process.

Discussion of DEI became part of a Texas Senate Finance Committee meeting on Feb. 8. Sen. Joan Huffman, R-Houston, the committee chair, said several committee members were concerned with the number of state university systems that used DEI initiatives as part of the hiring process. According to a story in the Austin American-Statesman, she expected legislators to continue discussions on how to stop that practice, and ensure that hiring at the state’s institutions of higher education are based only on merit.

“My point of bringing this up today and having the beginning of a discussion is to let the universities know the budget writers are paying attention,” Huffman said. 

However, and members of the state’s chapter of the NAACP on Tuesday denounced the recent directive and some called for the leadership of the country’s major sports organizations, to include the NCAA, to not host any of their championship games in the state until Abbott rescinds his DEI order to state agencies and universities.

This  first appeared on  and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Estefania Garcia is a confident young woman who has worked through her disabilities to achieve what she wants. One of her dreams was to attend college and the naysayers at El Dorado High School, she said, only made her more determined to make her dream a reality.

Today Garcia, who has a visual impairment and a learning disability, works as a receptionist for the Children’s Disabilities Information Coalition on El Paso’s Eastside where she also makes presentations for high school audiences.

She credits Project HIGHER, a collaborative program between El Paso Community College and Texas Workforce Solutions, for helping her earn a certificate in business management/administrative office assistant in 2020. That and her previous job experience helped her earn her current job.

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Project HIGHER, a competitive program launched in 2015, gives people with developmental and intellectual disabilities an opportunity for a post-secondary education and a better chance at employment. Each of the 25 students in the program gets a personal education coach who helps the participant in and out of the classroom to build the necessary social and academic skills to succeed in the workforce or to continue their academic journeys.

“Now I get to help people with disabilities and teach them about self-advocacy skills,” Garcia said. “I tell them to never give up. They’ve got to keep trying to do their best to achieve their goals.”

According to a 2022 report from the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, 19.1% of people with disabilities found jobs in 2021, which was better than the 17.9% the prior year. These individuals often work in the service, production, transportation and material moving industries, as well as sales and office jobs.

Project HIGHER, part of EPCC’s Center for Students with Disabilities, is open to El Paso County residents ages 18 to 25. It offers certificates in welding, graphic design, child development, business management, hospitality operations, as well as machining, automotive and electrical technologies. Participants attend classes alongside mainstream students so there are no modifications to the courses.

People who want to be part of Project HIGHER must register with TWS-Vocational Rehabilitation Services, apply and participate in an interview for any openings among the 25 student slots. TWS is part of the Texas Workforce Commission. TWS representatives were not available for comment.

The program, which expects about 12 openings this fall, receives more than 75 applications annually. TWS will pay tuition and fees of those selected beyond what is not covered by financial aid based on the family’s income, and assist the graduates to find jobs in their chosen field.

Alejandra Mendoza, Project HIGHER program manager since 2019, said 36 students have earned level-one certificates since the program started, and she expects another eight to graduate this spring. A level-one certificate means that there are no college core courses in English or mathematics.

Mendoza said the key to the program is the coaches, who have post-secondary degrees or the equivalent. They provide students with structure, and help them learn how to study and plan their schedules. They also ensure that the students participate in class and complete assignments. Additionally, the coaches encourage the students to participate in college events so they can socialize with people outside their program and academic cohorts.

The program manager said coaches, some who assist more than one student, work about 20 hours per week per student. The students generally take two courses per semester. The goal is to trim the number of hours as the student becomes more independent.

Among the coaches is Erica Collier, a veteran educator who is in her second semester with PH. She said that each student has specific needs. She has helped her students to be better communicators, less anxious, and more attentive. For example, to improve communication, Collier said that she would role play conversations with her students to prepare them to speak with a professor, or they would practice breathing techniques to relieve stress.

“We encourage them to go beyond their comfort zones to become well rounded students and people,” Collier said.

The program’s concept was promoted by Rick Razo, a retired Region 19 director of special education and a longtime advocate for people with disabilities. He served as the program’s first project manager for three years and even worked as an education coach before he separated from Project HIGHER, which is based on a successful program started in the Rio Grande Valley.

Project HIGHER goes beyond what most colleges offer students with disabilities such as tutors, readers, note takers, and sign language interpreters, or a change of venue to make in-person classes more accessible. The coaches build the skills that the students did not master in high school to include reading comprehension and how to study to take a test.

Razo is proud of the program’s more than 90% of students completing their certificates, but it is unknown how many program graduates find work. He said that even mainstream students do not get jobs automatically after they earn their degrees. The former program manager said he would like the PH program to add a vocational job training component during the summers because it would give the students field familiarity and help employers understand the capabilities of people with disabilities.

“The certificates just give (program graduates) better chances to get a job,” Razo said. “The weak link is employment. They need work experience to become stronger candidates.”

He said some of the benefits of hiring people with disabilities is that they are loyal, punctual and enthusiastic. They have good attitudes and make a positive impact on customers and other employees.

Dennis Martinez, owner of Zenitram, an auto repair shop in Northeast El Paso, hired program graduate Pablo Maul several months ago and called him a work in progress. He said that Maul, who earned a certificate in automotive technology, helps around the shop and eventually will be transitioned into more mechanical duties.

“We’re taking baby steps,” Martinez said. “(Maul) requires attention, but we knew what we were getting into. He’s doing OK.”

About 8% of the program graduates return to pursue their associate degree. One of them is Jurgen Linder, who earned his certificate in graphic design in 2022. Linder, who is on the autism spectrum, is pursuing his associate of applied science degree in advertising graphics & design. He hopes to complete his degree in two years.

Linder, 21, said he needed his Project HIGHER coach, especially with assignment reminders, note taking and test preparation, but now he is more confident in his abilities. He said his certificate has given him a sense of freedom and confidence.

“I improved my skills,” said Linder, who previously worked as a stocker at Walgreens. “I’m testing myself to get better. So far, so good.”

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A team of El Paso educators and community leaders plan to use most of a $1 million grant to launch an initiative to ensure more counselors are prepared to help the region’s high school seniors be ready for college by the time they graduate.

“Our goal is not only to ensure that every classroom across El Paso has a strong teacher that is preparing students for college, but also that all students have access to the support they need to actually pursue a college education, and that includes having access to a school counselor,” said Eddie Rodriguez, executive director of the Council on Regional Economic Expansion and Educational Development (CREEED).

and the recently received an “investment” from the Prentice Farrar Brown & Alline Ford Brown Foundation, through Bank of America, N.A. Trustee, for counselor preparation with a focus on academics. The Dallas-based Brown foundation is a private philanthropic grantmaking organization that supports best practices for students, teachers and after-school programs.

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The counseling initiative is the latest effort spearheaded by the El Paso Education Community of Practice to enhance the region’s education pipeline. The group already has met with counselors in and outside the region to learn which issues most affect today’s students and it will continue to conduct similar meetings as it creates and refines its plans to recruit and prepare the next generation of counselors. The community of practice is made up of representatives from CREEED, El Paso Community Foundation, El Paso Community College, the University of Texas at El Paso, and the public-school districts in the Region 19 Education Service Center. The group is credited with building and mentor teacher preparation programs since 2019.

The latest objective is to increase the number and enhance the quality of counselors in area districts to help students with everything from career guidance to financial aid applications because higher education degrees and credentials will be more important in the future. Data from the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board’s 60x30TX estimates that 60% or more of all new jobs by 2030 will require some post-secondary education.

Rodriguez said the initiative will elevate the counseling discipline with an emphasis on the academic side along with other aspects of the field such as student discipline, social services and social-emotional issues. While the focus is on high schools, he said the school districts will deploy the counselors where needed.

The current student-to-counselor ratio in Texas is 1,000 to 1. The average in El Paso is around 400-to-1, and the task force expects this initiative to lower that ratio, said Nadia Tellez, CREEED Choose to Excel director. She added that the recommended national ratio is 250-to-1, but said recent research funded by the American School Counselor Association found that the ratio should be closer to 150-to-1 in high needs areas such as El Paso.

Tellez said the task force wants the new initiative to improve the ratios, and to redirect and reinforce the current counselors where necessary, and better prepare counseling students at UTEP.

“We’re at that infancy stage of what the model will look like,” Tellez said.

Clifton Tanabe, dean of UTEP’s College of Education, said counselor panelists have told the community of practice that more personnel is needed to deal with large caseloads of students who request help with career counseling and academic or personal challenges. The counselors also suggested a more holistic campus-wide approach to counseling where teachers would be trained with basic counseling tools. He said that research data has shown that students will not do as well academically if they are stressed by a lack of food and shelter or if they experience difficult emotional challenges.

“There’s no escaping the fact that we’re in a moment in time where we’re dealing with social-emotional/mental health issues in schooling K-12 or higher,” Tanabe said. “There’s no way to sugarcoat it. That’s a real issue and schools and educators need our support.”

Tanabe said faculty from UTEP’s Department of Counseling, Special Education and Educational Psychology are working on innovative ways to change parts of the curricula based on feedback shared by the counselor panels. He said the department wants to add the most relevant knowledge, skill sets and learning experiences into the curricula so the counseling graduates can better serve students. He expects the community of practice to pick the counseling initiatives it wants to pursue in spring 2023.

“(Counseling) is another piece of the puzzle,” Tanabe said. “The bottom line is how can we work together with our school district partners and our community partners in supporting high-quality, academic-focused counselors so that we do not ignore that piece of the puzzle.”

Angie Morales, the at-risk and counselor coordinator with the Tornillo Independent School District, has participated in similar panel discussions as the ones conducted by the community of practice. Tornillo is the only district in the Region 19 Education Service Center with student-to-counselor ratios lower than the suggested national average of 250-to-1. This school year the district’s ratio is 206-to-1. She said her advice is to hire more counselors, especially in the big districts where high schools could have up to 3,000 students.

Morales previously worked as a counselor at Montwood High School, a campus in East El Paso with approximately 2,700 students. She tried to make sure that the more than 450 seniors that were her responsibility stayed on track to earn the necessary credits to graduate, while also maintaining student schedules, schedule changes and other assigned duties. She lamented that there was never enough time to do everything for everybody.

Morales, a first-generation college student, worked as a teacher for three years before she became a counselor in 2009 after earning her M.Ed. in school counseling from UTEP. She said students need guidance and direction since their freshman year.

One immediate solution she suggested was to relieve the counselors of the time-consuming duties of entering course requests and class schedule data. She said counselors often do that work after hours because they spend their day helping students in crisis to include contacting family and gathering the necessary resources for the students.

“What we need to take into consideration is that we only have eight hours a day with students, and we have seen more anxiety crisis, suicide outcries, students wanting to dropout, and students getting behind on credits because of the year we lost during the COVID pandemic,” Morales said.

The collaborative community of practice started its effort to enhance the region’s K-12 education pipeline in 2019 with UTEP’s Miner Teacher Residency Program, which is a year-long, hands-on clinical preparation program. The group launched the Miner Teacher Mentorship Program the following year. The mentorship program pairs novice teachers who have less than three years of service with highly trained educators ready to offer hands-on classroom support.

The Brown Foundation also donated $1 million in 2019 and 2020 to enhance the teacher and mentor teacher programs, respectively. Stephanie Otero, vice president of operations with the El Paso Community Foundation, said that $650,000 will go towards the counseling initiative and the rest will be divided among the teacher mentorship program, some educator fellowships, and the creation of a regional teacher pipeline dashboard.

“Through our efforts, we hope to reimagine what a student-centered success model looks like at a school,” Otero said. “(It’s) a model where every adult on a campus plays a role in the support of student success, both mental/emotional health and college/career readiness.”

CREEED’s Rodriguez said the existing counseling system is well entrenched so it will take several years to test and evaluate the necessary changes before a new counselor plan is implemented.

He is confident that the necessary changes in the counseling initiative will be made based on the task force’s past successes of the teacher and mentor-teacher programs.

“I think with the implementation of the teacher residency program, there will be more anticipation of fulfillment versus ‘we don’t know if this is really going to work,’” Rodriguez said.

Otero said that the next phase of education that the community of practice will tackle after counseling will be school leadership.

This first appeared on and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Food insecurity has many faces, according to Felix Fernandez, manager of the Tejano Food Pantry at the El Paso Community College Valle Verde Campus, and each face has a story.

Fernandez, an EPCC Campus Life employee since 2016, took charge of the food pantry in early September. He has helped many students with varying degrees of need, but the one that sticks out to him is the mother of three young children. The woman, a massage therapy student, was on her own. Her husband was in jail, and she had no income other than her financial aid.

He said the woman was a bit distrustful and embarrassed during her initial visit to the pantry’s corner offices on the second floor of Building C. She left with a box full of groceries and toiletries – and her dignity. The manager said he saw the gratitude in her eyes.

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“She said, ‘You guys are amazing,’” said Fernandez of the woman who has become a regular customer. “She depends on us to give her family some nutrition. She knows we’re here for her.”

That woman is among the more than 700 students that the college’s food pantry has served since it opened in April 2017. EPCC leaders and their peers around the country understand how a lack of food and other essentials can impede a student’s path to degree completion.

A new report from the Center for Community College Student Engagement, a research initiative of the University of Texas at Austin, found that one in three community college students ran out of food and did not have the money to buy more food within 30 days of taking the center’s survey.

A quarter of students said they had low to very low food security. The U.S. Department of Agriculture defines food insecurity as a household-level economic and social condition of limited or uncertain access to adequate food. The percentages were higher for students of color, including Hispanics at 34%.

The report is based on a survey administered in spring 2021 to 82,424 community college students from 194 institutions across the United States. EPCC did not participate in the survey.

“Many colleges are doing fabulous work in supporting their students, but more must be done to identify the students who require assistance, destigmatize the needs they have, and connect them to the services that can bolster them,” said Linda García, CCCSE’s executive director.

Carlos Amaya, EPCC vice president of Student and Enrollment Services, said the college has set up a safety net of counselors, programs and external partners to help students deal with personal challenges.

Amaya said the first step is for the students to request help. The college promotes the food pantry through its , social media and campus flyers, as well as word of mouth from staff and faculty members. He said EPCC’s key conduit of this kind of information is the campus counselors who can refer students to the best on- or off-campus resources for food, housing, or other necessary social services.

“The challenge is if they are not asking for the assistance,” Amaya said. “If they can’t find (help), they’re still on their own.”

Oscar Velasquez, the college’s districtwide counseling coordinator, said that his counselors talk with students during advising sessions to learn if they are dealing with any issues where the college or a community partner could help such as local food banks, the city of El Paso or the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.

Velasquez, who works out of the college’s Northwest campus, said that the need for food assistance is constant, but he noted a post-pandemic dip in the number of food requests since students returned to face-to-face instruction. Some have said that it might be because the students have gone back to work, but he reasoned that the students tapped into other community programs.

“I think the government, the state, the city, everybody upped their game on food and housing,” Velasquez said.

Students also can request help through the StayStrong Student Emergency Fund, which is part of the El Paso Community College Foundation. Since 2020, the fund has doled out more than $300,000 to students for such things as food, child care, housing, transportation and academic technology.

“The needs always are greater than the funds available so that’s the challenge,” said Keri Moe, associate vice president of External Relations, Communications and Development.

Moe, who oversees the EPCC Foundation, welcomed the CCCSE report because it would generate discussion and promote understanding about student food and housing insecurity, especially among students of color, who the report found are most impacted by food insecurity.

The latest EPCC enrollment numbers from fall 2021 showed that 86% of its students were Hispanic, 2% were Black and 1% were Asian. Moe added that 36% of those students who requested emergency fund aid had dependent children.

Fernandez, the Tejano Food Pantry manager, said he expects more students to request help as the holidays get closer. He recently met with Amaya and Felix Hinojosa, interim director of Student Leadership and Campus Life, to discuss plans to move the pantry, currently 200 square feet, to a 600 square-foot space on the third floor of Building C during the upcoming winter break.

The larger space will have room for two commercial refrigerators so the pantry can offer fresh fruits, vegetables and proteins. It also will allow for more storage of dry goods.

Amaya added that while Valle Verde has the college’s only fully stocked pantry, each campus is trying to establish a smaller emergency operation through the campus dean’s office.

The walls of the current pantry are lined with shelves filled with dry food staples such as rice, beans and pastas, and canned fruits, soups, meats and fish, and vegetables. Name brands share space with generic. Another shelf has toiletries and personal hygiene items.

All of the items are donated by the college’s students, employees, the Student Government Association and community partners. Pantry managers use the monetary donations to purchase essential items such as bathroom tissue when the supply runs low.

Students must register to have access to the pantry, and fill out a form to alert the management of their food preferences as well as any dietary or allergy restrictions.

The pantry is open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. weekdays when classes are in session, but students can work with pantry employees to schedule an alternate time to shop or pick up groceries. Amaya said that while there are established steps students must follow to use the food pantry, the college tries  to serve students with emergency needs immediately.

“We don’t want our students to jump through a bunch of hoops,” Amaya said. “We know the challenging times that we’re living in right now. We want to serve the students as quickly as possible.”

This first appeared on and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.