Carnegie Reporter, Vol. 1, No. 2 | Turnaround High School: Bel Air High School As a Teacher Views it (low bandwidth)

It was like a dark tunnel, with no end, no results,” says Genny Galindo describing how she felt a few years back about her teaching job. “You would like to see results at the end of a hard days’ work, to see your students be successful.”

But at Bel Air High School in El Paso, Texas, the students were simply not interested.

“Teachers would stand in front of class, giving the students the same old lesson plans,” says Galindo. “They just kept doing the same old thing over and over and coming up with the same results, and it was [thought to be] all the students’ fault.”

The school, which is in a low socioeconomic-level community, was on the brink of being closed. Only about five percent of students even thought about applying to college.

But then six years ago, things changed radically. A new principal, Vernon Butler, took over; one of the first things Butler asked was that all staff members write a letter to reapply for their jobs.

“We wrote about what we believed in as educators, what we had done for the school, for our students, about our teaching methods and strategies, our contributions to the community,” says Galindo. “He wanted to know what we would be willing to do for Bel Air and were we going to take the challenge.”

Galindo says she found the new approach appealed to her integrity as a teacher. “Hey! We’re not here just to collect a check,” she says softly. “Are we helping our country with the training of minds? Are we doing our part?”

Only 57 of the 132 teachers remained at Bel Air. The teachers who stayed took up Butler’s challenge and transformed the school. “I started looking at new [teaching] strategies,” she says. “We learned new ways to convey the information to our students; we also became very high-tech with computers. I found a new me.”

Galindo says Butler provided the “vision that we needed.” The school now has high academic expectations for all students and, she explains, Butler models compassion and supportive behavior with teachers that transfers to the students.

“He believed that this group could do it, that the parents and the students of the community could rise to the challenge regardless of their background,” Galindo says. Now she proudly reports that some of her students from this border town in Texas have gone on to be successful at leading colleges including Georgetown, Notre Dame and Yale.

Bel Air High School still has room for improvement, as indicated in part by its overall low SAT scores. In a letter to parents and the community, Butler said, “We still have much to do to help our students accomplish their goals.” But in May 2000 Bel Air was named a National Blue Ribbon School of Excellence by the U.S. Department of Education. That recognition was Galindo’s biggest reward.

“We were crying, we were laughing, we were hugging; we wanted to tell the whole world,” she says. “The community deserved it. All the changes and all the hard work had paid off.”