The following is excerpted from an interview of Mrs. Elfida Gutierrez, principal of Hueco Elementary School in the Socorro Independent School District in El Paso, Texas. The interview was conducted by Liz Lilliott as part of the Successful Texas Schoolwide Programs Research Project conducted by the Charles A. Dana Center through a contract from the Texas Education Agency and with funding support from the STAR Center. Attendance is an important focus. We know it is important that students are coming to school and that they like school. Although it's hard to measure concretely, we know we want to focus on making the kids feel good about themselves and school in general.
Technology is an important focus.
Our whole district is pushing technology. We know that's the wave of the future. In terms of academics, the learning styles program has been a good avenue for us to reach all of our kids. We have discovered that when we have had so much flexibility with our budget, we can buy a variety of materials, but we need to focus on how to teach, not what we use to teach. Therefore, we adopted a focus on learning styles.