May 13, 2012
Teach For America executive director on Teacher Appreciation Week.
Get to Know IDEA Frontier College Preparatory
Sixty-five students at IDEA Frontier College Preparatory in Brownsville participated in the school’s first robotics team. In its first year, the team took the top six spots at the regional 2011 FIRST Tech Challenge, and two of IDEA’s teams defied the odds, winning against veteran robotics teams in the Texas FTC State Championship. The team was created and coached by Michael Hardy, a science teacher at IDEA and Teach For America alumnus, who was recognized at the 2012 H-E-B Excellence in Education Awards with the Rising Star Award for secondary teaching.
“As an educator, I refused to design the robots for them,” Hardy told H-E-B. “I merely taught them the principles and required them to create, problem-solve, and learn from their mistakes—preparing them to compete in the 21st century.”
Region Timeline
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Spanish Conquistador Jose de Escandon begins formal colonization of the Lower Rio Grande Valley in the name of the Spanish crown.
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The Battle of Palomito Ranch occurs between the Union and Confederacy east of Brownsville, Texas—a full month after the formal surrender of the Confederacy under General Robert E. Lee.
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From 1942 until 1962, the Federal Bracero program sponsors over 4.5 million border crossings of Mexican citizens to work in agricultural jobs across the Southwest. Many of these are in the Rio Grande Valley.
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The United Farm Workers sponsors a march from South Texas to Austin to demand better working conditions for field laborers.
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Mexican American students at Edcouch-Elsa High School stage a walkout in protest of segregationist school policies.
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The Texas Education Agency begins collecting data for Rio Grande Valley students, despite having collected data for other parts of the state for years prior.
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The North American Free Trade Agreement takes effect, paving the way for the development and expansion of the maquiladora system of manufacturing. This system establishes factories in Mexico to take advantage of lower labor costs, while locating management and finance on the U.S. side of the border.
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IDEA Public Schools opens its first campus in Donna, Texas, founded by Teach For America alumni Tom Torkelson and JoAnn Gama.
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IDEA Public Schools and the Pharr-San Juan-Alamo school district, together with Teach For America, win a $5 million Federal Department of Education grant for an innovative teacher and principal training center.
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Teach For America surpasses 1,000 cumulative corps members in the Rio Grande Valley.
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Texas replaces the TAKS (Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills) with STAAR (State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness) exams.
Overheard
I hear countless times from fellow corps members that Teach For America "changed their lives." I personally feel as if I "came alive" through Teach For America by being brought to a place (the Rio Grande Valley) that I'd never considered living and now (after 16 years) couldn't imagine ever leaving.
Rio Grande Valley Corps 1995
Press
February 29, 2012
"Villalobos gives back through Teach for America..."
February 8, 2012
"Teach For America has called the Valley home since 1991 when we recruited our first corps of 25 teachers to lead classroom in local public schools..."
