In January, Leander ISD Superintendent Bret Champion announced Terri Breaux will be the principal of Christine Camacho Elementary School, which opens this fall.
Breaux has worked in education for 29 years and has been in LISD since 1994. She served as a teacher and assistant principal at Mason Elementary School as well as principal at Laura Welch Bush Elementary School.
Her vision for CES, she said, is to create a collaborative learning environment in which classes such as math, science and English are integrated, and students have ample opportunities to work together.
What is a STEM school and what made you want to have one in the district?
A STEM school stands for science, technology, engineering and math. STEM really is a culture. We’re trying to change the culture of learning. These kids that are growing up in our world right now are very different than when we grew up. Gone are the days when we sit in rows in classrooms and listen to lectures all day.
We also say STEM stands for students and teachers engaging minds. What we’re trying to do is break down those barriers of just having math class, science class, language arts class—we’re really trying to integrate all of those classes together.
STEM has the … component[s][of]creativity, critical thinking, collaboration and communication. We’re trying to pull the real world into our school and to really prepare our kids for jobs that we don’t even know are being created yet. By preparing them with these four skills we feel like they can do any job that they want to.
Some people get confused about STEM. They think we are trying to create a lot of engineers around here, and of course, that is always a perk, but there are lots of [other] STEM jobs.
When you look at the [State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness] scores, I feel like the students around here are underperforming. They have great teachers, great administrators … [these] are very good schools. But I feel like these kids need to be taught in a different way. … That’s where STEM comes in; it’s that engagement piece that they need. … When you make it fun you don’t realize you’re doing math.”
What are some of the advantages for students to having STEM programs in their curriculum?
Look at student engagement. Our kids are in a world of social media [and] video games—everything is at their fingertips. Because they live in such a different world, we have to teach them in that world instead of continuing to teach like our teachers taught us. It’s finding what is it … that we can provide for our students that can provide them with the best learning opportunities possible in today’s world? I want to see [students] working together … having classes work together to create a product.
The design [of the school] lends itself to all of that collaborative learning. That’s why we have tables and not desks. I don’t want kids sitting by themselves anymore. It’s all about creativity and allowing space for that.
What are some of your goals for your first year at Camacho?
I think our goal is to create a culture of STEM. We really want our parents to understand what that looks like. I want our parents in our schools, and I want them participating so they can see our culture of STEM.
Our teachers are beginning to understand the culture of STEM, but this doesn’t happen overnight. We are going to start promoting the culture. [The students] have all come from traditional schools and they are good schools, but this [learning environment] is just different. We don’t want to do it too fast.
We want [parents] to be a stakeholder in changing our culture.
What are your goals for the next five years?
We hope that we will be teaching in transdisciplinary units, which means that … the learning [at Camacho] is in themes. … We’re trying to combine two subjects together right now for starters. I’m hoping in five years that you will walk into a classroom and you won’t know, ‘Is this math? Or is this science?’ Or, wait a minute, they are writing, so maybe it’s an English class.’ All of those subjects blended together to have a lot of project-based learning.
How will you create a sense of community among parents, students and teachers at a new school?
We started on June 1 inviting our parents to Leander Middle School just so I could share my vision. I was surprised; we had over 300 people there-just sharing first, my vision [and] what I want the school to be like. They need to know that [students] are going to come to school, and they are going to be safe and they are going to have fun learning. … Our job now is to be very transparent with [parents].
We want [parents] to be a partner with us. We want them to come to our school, volunteering, reading to kids in the classroom. We just want to make partnerships with [parents].