Southeast Houston campus aims to level the playing field
Disadvantaged elementary students get attentive education
Ninety-one fifth graders from Park Place Elementary School got off of a plane at William P. Hobby Airport last week, returning from the school’s annual fifth-grade trip to Washington D.C.
The trip, which the school made for the first time this year, is the kind of equalizing opportunity teachers and staff at Park Place, located off Interstate 45 in southeast Houston, want to provide for students.
The students, after all, face challenges that not every kid in the district does, Principal Gerardo Leal said.
“I can tell you that my mission and my vision is to provide the same type of education here that other schools have,” he said. “And this trip is a clear example. We knew that other schools take this trip — why not us? I want our teachers to know and our students to believe that you can get the same kind of opportunity here that you can get anywhere else. It’s one of the things I’m very moved by.”
At Park Place, nearly 96 percent of the 949 students is considered economically disadvantaged, according to data provided by Children at Risk, a nonpartisan research and advocacy organization.
It’s a statistic that represents a major challenge to teachers, said Veronica Trevino, who teaches fifth grade. Students are coming from home lives that aren’t necessarily conducive to learning, she said, and sometimes are actually the opposite.
“A lot of students come from a single parent and others are facing extreme emotional or social challenges,” she said. “Some of the students don’t have the attitude that they want to work because they’re facing so many obstacles at home. Some of these kids are learning to be adults an early age.”
Despite the challenges, there have been tremendous successes. In 2018, Park Place made the Top 10 of Gold Ribbon Elementary Schools in greater Houston with a 75 percent or more economically disadvantaged student body that scored high academic marks. And according to Children at Risk, the school earns an ‘A’ rating.
It’s an achievement that Leal chalks up to not only striving to provide the same opportunities for Park Place students, but also to the tremendous effort of Park Place’s teachers to overcome the challenges they face at home.
“When you teach students where a kid’s mom got burned by the dad or a dad was deported over the weekend — how do you educate a kid like that? You don’t welcome a kid with a textbook the next day,” he said. “You have to make them feel like they’re part of our school, you have to be someone who cares and nurtures for them.”
Trevino, who attended elementary school in Houston and has been a teacher in the district for 32 years, said that her childhood wasn’t easy either. Her mother cleaned houses and she couldn’t always afford the opportunities other students had.
That background allows her to see the world how her students see it, she said, and teach accordingly.
“Sometimes kids might be sitting down and looking at the teacher, but you don’t know what’s going on through their minds,” she said. “As a teacher you can tell if they’re motivated or if there is something that’s bothering them. We take the time to be their counselors, someone they can trust to talk to us.”
Building a sense of unity is also important, she said. At Park Place, where 81 percent of the students are Hispanic and 14 percent are Asian, Trevino said it’s important to create an atmosphere of inclusion in the classroom so that students can learn from one another.
That’s part of the idea behind bringing them to Washington last week, she said — to show everyone they belong here.
And, of course, to give the students an experience they might not have otherwise.
“The trip was busy, basically non-stop,” said Trevino. “But it will be very remarkable for our students — something they’ll never forget.”