I teach 8th grade English Language Arts/Reading (ELAR) with embedded English as a Second Language (ESL) supports at the Academy for Academic Enhancement Gifted & Talented Magnet Middle School (Ac2E MS). This is a magnet school which draws from the three middle school 'home campus' regions of the RGCGISD system, and is located in Rio Grande City, Texas, taking in a total of about 270 students.

As a magnet campus, Ac2E MS is not given a campus score by the Texas Education Agency (TEA). However, the RGCGISD rating information is available. Standardized assessment data from my classes in the 2021-2022 academic year is available in the 'Dramatic Academic Growth' section of this website.

The Ac2E MS demographic data is not disaggregated from the district's 'home campus' demographic information. Overall demographic information for the district is available, and our campus is broadly similar. 99% of students are Mexican-American Hispanic, approximately 85% are Emergent Bilingual (EB, formerly English Language Learners or ELLs), approximately 10% of students received formalized special education services, and 95% of students qualify as economically disadvantaged. As a magnet campus, all students I teach are qualified as Gifted & Talented (GT); most were evaluated in early elementary school, though the evaluation process continues through late elementary and middle school. The demographics inside my classroom are broadly similar to the demographics of my district as a whole, though with some fuzziness due to the noise inherent in drawing conclusions based on small numbers.

As a magnet campus, the teaching staff and class sizes are small--approximately 16-18 students in each class for the 2022-2023 academic year, through class sizes were between 22-26 in the year before. All ELAR lessons are co-planned and mirrored in implementation with my partner teacher, and all ELAR classes are blocked for 90-minute lessons. We utilize parts of the district's purchased Amplify curriculum, though we have considerably more freedom of action than that scripted curriculum implies. I teach two 90 minute ELAR blocks each day, with a total of 36 students in the 2022-2023 academic year (though the main body of evidence is drawn from the 2021-2022 year, where I had a handful more).

In addition to the ELAR classes, I lead the school's pilot STEM program, in its first year (for more details, see the 'Access' section of this website). This involves two fifty-minute classes each day, with 42 students total (though this has some overlap with my ELAR enrollment). This position involves a significant degree of planning and consultation with the other STEM program teachers in 6th & 7th grade, with the aim to scaffold the program over the coming years, so that students leave middle school with a working knowledge of design thinking processes, implementations in programming spaces, and the basal knowledge required to use their high school years to acquire technology skills and certifications to prepare them for the workforce or university.