Now, I’m also in addition to that period here at once, I guess my journey to take the same international was in 2013. That’s when I made the transition from being a school principal to being a full time faculty member here at an international. Here I am, I this is my eighth year, I only work preparing as far as my academic role is preparing future school principals. That program has since transitioned to an a fully online program, and we have principal candidates from not only from the local area, but we also have rural rural areas in Texas. Know, I think those are the individuals that are taking advantage of the online programs. Now why is this important? Because I have been involved also as a pie and I had a and it’s just now ended this year as a USDA grant to work with rural school rural school communities. The grant basically works with. The idea was to build a middle school teacher, so knowledge on math and science. And also develop closer ties with those communities, so I work with the the web counties, the Hebron Hebron bill, which is Jim Hogg and Cotulla SD, and I’m missing one eye. And we were the other one. But basically the idea is, does that make the connections again? You know, this is something that in my role as educator and as a community mentor, you know, organizer and just like, you know, our dean said earlier, like, I love to make bridges, you know, build bridges and the connections are important . So, you know, it’s very the rural communities in Texas. You know, here in Texas, we actually have more school districts that are rural school districts. And when I’m talking about, you know, rural Utah and I’m sure you’re you’re familiar, like we have a school district right now that I have a student in. It’s like the whole town. The population of the town is like 576. So like the center of the state, all the community is a school, right? And so those individuals not only have I worked with them directly, but now I know I have knowledge on how to work with them because I have been able to have the experience from that grant. And then there are as of right now, I have been very involved again with faculty university wide and with the faculty Senate president for the university. I have been a senator for seven years and I started my tenure as president this this academic year. And that again, you know, just I love to be involved. I love to work. I and some sometimes our details we like, when are you going to say no to something, right? But is just who I am. I think that the more you do that you can give back.
It’s going to come back to some way writing it somehow. Maybe not for you, but maybe for your family. You know, it’s a blessing. Basically, you know that you give to others so that you can participate and celebrate and you will, you know, you’ll have you’ll get something in return, you know? And that’s what the beauty of involvement is now. Here are some of you or we’re trying to do. Is this the success, mobility and access success and mobility, right? So those are the core ideas. I think that through my work and my experiences, I have definitely not only am I I, I’m an example of, you know, how access. And it depends on how you define success, right? You know, it’s I’m not talking about monetary success or financial success, but it’s just I would always tell teachers, you know, your conscious have to be cast to be clear and in balance that you know that you did absolutely everything you could have done for that child, right ? If you can ten, 15 years from now and you’re going to find that child in the street. And if you can face them and if you can talk to them knowing that you did everything possible for that child and that that child is not going to have anything to reproach or to say, You know what, you treated me wrongly, you know, then you’ve done your job. You know, if you go home knowing that, then then you’ve done everything you absolutely can. And that’s that’s how I live my life, right? You have to do unto others as you want them to do unto yourself. You know, that’s a golden rule. And and so it’ll in terms of data, what you know, going back to specifically data, it involves all those factors, you know, because a student is that a number. And I think that is the idea that I really inculcated in our teachers when I work with teachers, supervising teachers. And now I had a school that had 1100 elementary school students. I had 120 adults under my supervision. And of course, everything that comes with that right. Not every day is perfect, but I successfully, you know, handled every single problem that came my way. And that’s because the relationships and the respect, you know, you honor someone when you have someone in front of you. You know, if you have a parent that comes in and you know, they’re there and they’re at their wits end about everything and anything that has happening to you in their lives, and it takes you four to five hours. That because I had those parent conferences, that’s how long it’s going to take to win a parent over. That’s how long it’s going to take. Right now are teacher candidates, you know, that’s what we’re working on. Sharing that knowledge of all the faculty experiences and building that into their teacher preparation program.