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dr. lourdes
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bio
Growing up in a disadvantaged family in Puerto Rico, Lourdes soon learned that education was the way out of the poverty cycle. This understanding led her to complete her undergraduate degree in mathematics and begin teaching. She left Puerto Rico in 1979 to do community development work in Guatemala. She established and directed schools, an orphanage, feeding centers, and clinics. She procured resources for these entities through interaction with non-profit organizations and by obtaining assistance from Guatemalan government officials. Her community education work included educational radio programs and parent and community education in various venues. Her experience in community development was a catalyst that led Lourdes to choose Research, Evaluation, and Measurement as the focus of her Master's degree.
When she moved to the United States in 1990, she had to overcome enormous financial, linguistic, and cultural barriers to pursue the American Dream. She first worked as a Middle School Bilingual Curriculum Content (BCC) mathematic teacher in Dade County and then as Regular High School Mathematic teacher in Palm Beach County.
She went on to
complete her Ed.D in Leadership and took a position as a School Improvement and Assessment Specialist for the School District of Palm Beach County. Her responsibilities included leading NCLB staff development opportunities for teachers and school administrators, as well as speaking at community forums regarding the same issues.
Lourdes is a Hispanic Academic Achievement and Parental Involvement Specialist who assists schools and districts in their efforts to close the achievement gap between Hispanic and African American students and their White and Aisian peers. She creates data streams and utilize programs, methods, and strategies to train teachers, school administrators, district personnel, parents and the community at large, to help all students achieve academic proficiency.
She provides consulting services, staff development opportunities, and motivational speaking. Her seminars include: NCLB and AYP,
school culture, cultural competency, Hispanic and African American academic achievement, ESL, Bilingual and Shelter Education, parental involvement, assessment literacy and development, test-preparation and test-taking strategies, student motivation, teacher team-building, mathematics content by strands, etc.
In order to have a better understanding about the lack of achievement among minority students, Dr. Lourdes has interviewed hundreds of English Language Learner, Hispanic, Afro-American and Native Americans middle and high school students to find out, from their perspective, what are the underlying reasons for their lack of achievement and what can the school do to help them improve. These findings are use to customize strategic plans at the school level to help the target population improve their performance in school and on the State tests.
She holds the following degrees: B.S. in Mathematics, M.S. in Research, Measurement, & Evaluation, and Ed.D. in Leadership. She offers more than thirty years of national and oversea experience including: Teaching Mathematics at Middle and High school and University Levels; Community Development, District Level Administration; School/District/State Staff Development; Educational Consulting; and, Educational Quantitative and Qualitative Research.
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work and writing Navigating the American Educational System The Hispanic Next Door |
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