Dr. J.A. Gonzalez became McAllen ISD’s Superintendent in 2016, overseeing a district that’s characterized as a District of Champions, with amazing standings, including state-ranked academic and finance programs, as well as nationally ranked high schools, music program, health and PE program, and so much more. A veteran educator of 25 years, Dr. Gonzalez has been at the helm as McAllen ISD earned the state’s highest rating, an ‘A’ for two straight years. It has also earned the state’s Post-Secondary Readiness Distinction three years in a row, plus the School FIRST award for financial integrity 16 times in the past 17 years. In fact,
only three districts in all of Texas, with an enrollment of more than 20,000 students, earned all three of those awards. McAllen ISD is one of those three and the only one of the three from the Rio Grande Valley. Dr. Gonzalez initiated the creation of STEAM-Plus in Pre-Kinder through 12th grades. This learning framework places a great emphasis on Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Math, including coding, rocketry, and robotics. In addition,
STEAM-Plus systematically addresses a child’s emotional intelligence.
Andy Krenz: One thing that we knew that we needed to have a mechanism and we developed the Champion Project and with the use of that exchange we went out to the community and gathered thoughts with regard to what we should do around instruction, what we should do around safety and security, wellness and mental health, customer service, extra-curricular activities, community involvement, and emotional intelligence. We put that out through a ThoughtExchange and then we took the top rated thoughts and we ran it through a systems-thinking model in which we started to identify all the challenges that came through the ThoughtExchange.
And we started to hypothesise on how we could overcome those challenges, challenges such as face-to-face instructions, closing performance gaps, making sure that we gave students opportunities for extra-curricular activities amongst the few. But the ThoughtExchange played a key role in us gathering information and being transparent with our community. And I’d like to take two minutes of my five minutes to share a two minute video with you all that kind of shares the story of our Champion Project. Thumbs up if you’ve got audio.
Dr. J. A. Gonzalez: If you look at the grand scheme of things then the whole objective is s to use this as a vehicle to propel our district forward. We’re excited about the Champion Project at McAllen ISD. It’s a bit team effort between the community and the McAllen ISD family to make sure that we’re prepared for the fall. So as we get closer to the fall we can share the specifics with regard to what next year is going to look like in different areas such as our academic program such as extra-curricular activities, customer service, emotional intelligence to mention a few. So it’s just a big team effort and everybody’s doing a great job so I’m excited to be a part of the team.
Female 1: Good morning everyone. For [unintelligible 00:01:53] we –
Teresa Trdla: So the feedback from the group has been amazing. When you bring together the ELT, the district administration plus directors, coordinators, principals, there’s a really great sense of synergy in the room. Everyone is really excited about working together to continue to build and to make McAllen ISD what it is and just give kids and families that experience that they get when they come to McAllen ISD. So the energy in the room has been great.
Richard Roberts: I think one of the big ideas is to walk away with just understanding what the challenges are and understanding what we all can do to address those challenges and then really start thinking about how we can put these plans into action and then move forward into the next school year with a really clear vision of where we want to go.
Dr. J.A. Gonzalez: I just want to thank everybody that’s worked so hard on the Champion Project. A big thank you to our community, to our parents and students, and especially our hard working teachers. In utilizing the Champion Project one of the things I just wanted to share with you all is that getting out to the community and leveraging the ThoughtExchange to gather the top-rated thoughts, and what we’re doing now is just packaging things as we move into the fall so we’re crystal clear with regard to how thing are going to roll-out. One of the biggest questions was face-to-face instruction and what that was going to look like, so we made it a point to be very specific on face-to-face instruction.
We made it a point to be very specific on what was going to go in the summertime with regard to closing performance gaps and enrichment camps and other opportunities for students to get back into the face-to-face modes. So the Champion Project at McAllen ISD has been something that we’re using as a vehicle along with ThoughtExchange to push our community forward. Thank you.
Note: The following text is transcribed from the event audio. It’s largely accurate, but in some cases it may be a bit off due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It’s intended as an aid to understanding the event, but it shouldn’t be treated as an authoritative record.
