Mission High School TAFE members making history after state win
Mission, Texas - Mission High School (MHS) TAFE members have made Mission CISD history at the Texas Association of Future Educators (TAFE) Annual Teach Tomorrow Summit. Students competed at the state level for an opportunity to advance to the National competition. TAFE members Laura Reyes and Brisa Gonzalez will be the first from Mission CISD to compete in the Educators Rising Nationals competition for their service project visual presentation.
“We practiced our presentation every day, reading through our information and making sure we had all our points included,” said National Qualifier Brisa Gonzalez. “Once we were in front of the judges, it was like we were having a conversation with them. I think that really helped us.”
The presentation portion was only half of the competition. The first part was the community service project that was completed by the competitors and arranged as a visual presentation for the judges. Laura and Brisa’s project was a cereal box drive held earlier in the school year.
“It took a couple of weeks to complete the cereal box donation drive from start to finish. The first step was creating and decorating all the donation boxes with our team members.” shared National Qualifier Laura Reyes. “I feel that us going national is a win for the whole team because it is their first year being in TAFE too.”
Laura and Brisa collected a total of 56 cereal boxes throughout their various donation stations at MHS. All the boxes collected through the drive have been donated to the Mission Food Pantry. THE MHS TAFE members have already started planning for next year with the help of advisor, Ms. Debra Colunga.
“Ms. Colunga has been a very good teacher and advisor. We couldn’t have done it without her,” said Brisa. “We plan to have the neighboring campuses participate in the service projects next year to collect more donations.”
The 2023 Educators Rising National Conference is scheduled to take place June 29-July 2, 2023, in Orlando, Florida, at the Renaissance Orlando at Seaworld. This year’s theme is Serving Our Community.
In addition to our national qualifiers, two MHS TAFE teams brought home Gold in the state competition. Melany Arroyo and Mendoly Caro placed Gold in the contest event, Project Visualize: Education Awareness. Along with Senaida Lopez and Kayla Martinez for the contest event, Project Visualize: Teaching & Training.
Educators Rising National Competitions are performance-based competitive events in which aspiring educators demonstrate their knowledge, skills, and leadership in education. With a blend of individual and team events, competitions are authentic, engaging opportunities for rising educators to stretch their creativity, commitment, and professionalism.
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