Edna Alvarado
Her leadership and innovation was born of necessity, with the ferocity and resolve that only a mother knows. Eran sus hijos los que desesperadamente necesitaban ayuda. It was her bright growing boys who desperately needed help.
She was a teacher in Guatemala before coming to America 26 years ago. She and her family had to learn a new country and a new language. For her Spanish-speaking sons, it was sink or swim in the classroom. So, she did what any mother would…jumped in with them.
She started with after-school lessons and dedicated parental involvement. She then became licensed to teach in New Mexico and obtained her master’s in bilingual education from UNM College of Education. Today, as a recognized expert in bilingual education, she teaches kindergarteners in Albuquerque’s inner-city and, at UNM, the next generation of teachers.
“With good bilingual programs and parental involvement you reverse patterns of failure,” Alvarado says. “Many of my past students are now first generation college students, and that’s when you see that empowering the parents to be behind their students from kindergarten on is wonderful.”
Alvarado’s innovative methodology in combination with parental involvement has proven successful. She’s a recipient of the Golden Apple Award—one of the most distinguished and exclusive honors teachers can receive. Her students are performing above grade level by the time they leave her classroom. At her school, a transformation is happening: fewer bilingual students are in special education and more are in gifted programs.
“Bilingual teachers from UNM are very well prepared, and therefore, schools all over the country want to hire them,” Alvarado says. “Other states don’t have the insights we do.”
Alvarado set out to help her children succeed. And they have. But she didn’t stop there. It spread, beyond her family, beyond the kindergarten classroom into the lives of many. Alvarado’s past “kinders,” as she so endearingly refers to her students, are now college graduates with children of their own. The waves of education are far reaching.
How many worlds, small and large, will UNM College of Education alumni transform, and will yours be one of them? With your vital support, the answers are “many” and “yes.”