Edinburg High School Receives 2008 College Board Inspiration Award

Peter Negroni, senior vice president for relationship development at the College Board, with students at Edinburg High School

Juan’s story resembles that of many students at Edinburg High School. Located in Edinburg, Texas, just  10 miles from the Mexican border, Edinburg High School is home to many Mexican migrant workers. The school boasts more than 2,600 students, of whom 84 percent are Hispanic and 83 percent qualify for free or reduced-price lunches.
 
On April 22, Edinburg High School was presented with a 2008 Inspiration Award. The sense of pride and happiness could be felt in everyone, from the AVID students and migrant students who cheerfully greeted guests at the entrance to the dedicated staff who arranged the details and the parents who were at there to express their pride.

Students at Edinburg are proud and protective of their school, and such pride is not just present in their fight song or the lyrics that school cheerleaders dance to. In April, more than 300 students and teachers worked together to make the “Bobcat Beautification Project” possible, painting the outside of the school and planting trees and shrubs that were bought with donations from parents and Edinburg businesses. “We had a great time digging holes and laughing with the kids.” says Yesenia Molina, assistant principal at Edinburg High School.

This pride could be felt during the assembly, where Principal Daniel Roma addressed guests and more than 2,000 students gathered and cheered in the high school gymnasium. College Board Senior Vice President for Relationship Development Peter Negroni presented students, staff and special guests with the trophy and a $25,000 check. Cassandra Saenz, Edinburg student council president and incoming freshman at Georgetown University, and Jarrod Salaiz, an Edinburg senior, spoke about how their high school had been a source of inspiration in their lives. Estibaliz Arriaga, Cheryll Gaffney, Barbary Keith and Vice President Ann Wright, all from the College Board’s Southwestern Regional Office, also attended the assembly. Other special guests included Texas State Representative Aaron Peña and Edinburg Superintendent of Schools Gilbert Garza, Jr.

Musical roots run deep at Edinburg High School. During the assembly, the school’s BobCat band and choir sang for the crowd. Assembly participants and guests were delighted with a great performance by the school’s mariachi band, Primer Orgullo, a group of more than 20 performers who inspired attendees to sing “Cielito Lindo” and other traditional Mexican tunes.

Edinburg High School lives and breathes a college-going culture and plants this seed in every student’s mind. As for Juan Cantu, hard work and determination have paid off. This year he was accepted to Harvard, where he plans to major in biomedical engineering, a degree that he hopes will help him give back to the agricultural community in the Rio Grande Valley. Although faced with many adversities, no member of the staff or the student body gives up. Because, as Peter Negroni told students at Edinburg, “Yes, You Can, or ‘Si, Se Puede.’”

VP Ann Wright

This year the Southern Association for College Admission Counseling met in Little Rock, Ark., so we joined our SRO staff for the annual meeting. We did quite a lot of business there, sponsoring a reception for higher ed members, hosting a dinner with some folks from SMU, meeting with faculty from the University of Arkansas and standing watch at our exhibit. 

Once again, one of the three College Board Inspiration Award winners came from the Southwestern Region. On May 22, Peter Negroni, accompanied by staff from our office and New York, journeyed to Edinburg High School in the Rio Grande Valley for the award assembly. This school was selected because of its outstanding college-preparation programs and partnerships among teachers, parents and community organizations. Through dedication and commitment, Edinburg High School has helped to make higher education possible for students facing economic, social and cultural barriers by improving their academic environment.

In late April, the staff attended the Texas ACAC conference in San Antonio, Texas, where the SWRO was recognized for partnering with TACAC and enhancing the summer institute for secondary and college admission counselors. Summer 2007 was the first time the College Board was involved, and we are well on our way to completing plans for attending the summer 2008 conference, which will be held again in San Antonio.

SWRO's new K-12 Chief, Cheryll Gaffney, gets full credit for a very successful superintendents lunch here in Austin. Mike Riley spoke at the luncheon, which included 23 superintendents or their delegates, and induced a spirited discussion of school and district reform, as well as numerous hot topics in the Texas K-12 world. Regional council members from our four states met in April and are already hard at work planning for Regional Forum 2009 in Oklahoma City.  

The SWRO staff recently gathered together to discuss strategic planning. We were pleased to spend time with Eric Cantor, the new senior vice president of region and account services, and the staff is happily responding to his enthusiasm and creative ideas. In addition to Eric, we heard from Bruce Walker of UT-Austin, Mike Riley and our Texas lobbyist, David Anderson. We are working on a strategic plan for each of the states in our region and hope this will allow us to spend more time in organized planning.

2007-08 Siemens National AP Teacher Penny Smeltzer

Penny Smeltzer, a teacher at Westwood High School in Austin, Texas, has been named the Siemens National AP Teacher for 2007-08. Smeltzer, who has taught AP Statistics for 12 years, was chosen for her dedication to the AP Program — both inside and outside the classroom. Each year, the Siemens Awards for Advanced Placement select one national teacher winner, who receives a $5,000 award, and 50 state teachers, one for each state, who receive
$1,000 awards.

Smeltzer works hard to provide a classroom environment in which students can grow intellectually as well as academically. By helping her students to truly understand the concepts of the course, she hopes to produce better thinkers, rather than more proficient test-takers. “Those peripheral lessons that happen in the course of learning the curriculum take students from wherever they are to higher ground,” Smeltzer explains. “Students realize that they can actually think, solve problems and work together.”

Her class mantra is “If we can learn to get along here, we can spread it to the world.” Smeltzer endeavors to help her students along the path to becoming more responsible citizens of the world, better caretakers of the planet and a part of the solution to the extraordinary challenges we face. She believes that AP is one of the last bastions for encouraging higher-level thinking and communication from all students of all backgrounds.

Each year, the Siemens Awards for Advanced Placement honor the top-performing American high school students, teachers and high schools. Now in its 10th year, the Siemens Foundation, in partnership with the College Board, annually awards $2,000 scholarships to as many as 100 AP students in 50 states. The program also offers $1,000 awards to one AP math, science or technology teacher in each of the 50 states for excellence in teaching AP courses, and $1,000 grants to one high school in each state, for providing students opportunities to participate in and succeed in AP math and science courses.

Significant progress has been made on the National Math and Science Initiative since the recipients were announced last fall. The Arkansas Advanced Initiative for Math and Science has selected the 10 schools that will make up the first cohort of this ambitious program designed to boost participation in the AP® Program. This Arkansas organization was one of seven organizations awarded grants of up to $13.2 million each from NMSI to provide training and incentive programs to teachers of AP courses and to increase enrollment and promote success among students over the next six years.
 
Participating schools will see large increases in the number of students enrolled in rigorous AP English, math and science courses beginning this fall. Teachers and administrators in these schools will participate over the summer in professional development designed to increase their capacity to help the much larger group of students who take AP courses succeed.

The selected Arkansas schools are as follows: