Chávez HS principal now working at school named for his hero

In this week’s I am HISD, which features district students, graduates, employees, and other team members, Chávez High School Principal René Sánchez talks about how he gave up a career in politics to work in public education, what he learned at one of the state’s smallest ISDs, and why working at a school named for a famous labor leader is so personally satisfying.

You earned a bachelor’s degree in government from Notre Dame and a law degree from Ohio State before obtaining your master’s in education from UT. The first two seem like a logical progression, but the last one…not so much. What happened? Did you ever work as an attorney?

Well, I took the bar exam, but I never actually served as an attorney, because one day I realized that I didn’t much like law students. And I figured that eventually law students become lawyers, so…

Later, I came to a sort of crossroads. Shortly after I returned home to Edinburg, I was offered a chance to be an aide to a friend who’d been called up to Washington, D.C. But by that point, I had already agreed to teach U.S. history at my old high school, because my law school loans were coming due and I needed a job. I figured I had already made a promise, so I remained teaching. But I could have taken a totally different path. It was either teaching or working on the Hill.

During your time in public education, you moved from arguably one of the state’s smallest districts to the absolute largest. How many students did Orange Grove ISD serve when you were there and in how many schools? Did you learn any lessons there that have also served you well in this one?

Orange Grove serves a couple thousand students in five schools: a primary, an elementary, an intermediary, a junior high, and a high school. But the main things I learned are that 1) I’m an urban educator and 2) the concerns you face in a rural setting are actually very similar to the ones you find here. It’s all about being able to find the right teachers for the kids—and in some cases, finding any teachers at all. Because not everybody wants to work in a rural community and not everyone wants to work in the southeast end of Houston. So you end up having to sell your school to prospective teachers, but here at Chávez, that’s easy.

You became the principal of Chávez High School in May, correct? What has that been like for you?

Oh, it’s been a wonderful. And whoever’s idea it was for me to come in early was brilliant. I got to work with Mr. DeLeon before he left, go through the end-of-year testing, procedures, award ceremonies, and meet with many of the students and teachers before they went away for the summer. This way, I got to know them better so the kids weren’t like, “Who is this guy?” when they came back to school in the fall.

Dan DeLeon was the principal at Chávez for many years. Was it intimidating to be filling the shoes of someone who had been at the campus for so long?

No, not really. I was charged to do certain things and so was he. He was able to move the school in the direction of being able to get kids ready for college and a career, and I feel like my role is to take the baton and extend it further with the skills and the belief systems that I have, in terms of what I think our kids are able to do and what they deserve.

So what do you see your charge as being?

My goal is to get students to understand that they need to have a plan. High school is a means to an end. It does not end in 12^th grade. Then, they need to figure out what they’re going to do next. My school’s job is to get them prepared to make that decision early so that they have options. The decisions they’re making now are going to affect the families they create—and truthfully, they might even affect their parents. All of those folks are counting on them to make the right decisions now, and if they’re successful, they’ll be able to get jobs and buy houses and do all of the things they want to do so they can have a happy and successful life.

I understand César Chávez is actually a hero of yours. It must be a real thrill to work at a school named in his honor. What is it about his story that you find most compelling, and is it true that you admire him so much, you actually named your son after him?

Yes, it’s true. My oldest son, César, is seven. Why I think César Chávez is compelling is that he was able to stand up for the rights of others and make it about the community and a group of people…it’s just that, if everybody’s willing to pitch in, you can accomplish any goal. I keep trying to emphasize to the staff and the students that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

Is that something you try to communicate to your students?

Every chance I get. You will see it in our halls, at our football games, and hopefully, on bumper stickers very soon. And it applies not just to our students, but to any student in our zone, whether they’re at Ortíz MS or Rucker ES. I need to make this the best school possible for you, because from now on you’re not just a Park Place Tiger, you’re a Chávez Lobo, and you need to be able to feel that.

I’ve learned a lot since law school. The thing that caused me to dislike law students was the hyper-competitive nature, the succeed-at-all-costs self-expectation.  Since then, as a principal, I see that internal drive, the researchers are calling it “grit” now, is necessary for a person to be successful over the long haul.  Somehow, as educators, we need to find a way to instill this grit in our students while they are in our care.

We’re trying to get that community feeling out here in southeast Houston, where there’s a certain amount of love and respect that gets shared. So we have to find a happy medium between grit and community or develop grit for the community.  I know that the adults at Chavez can make it happen if we ourselves stick to it. Because there’s something about the kids here—they want to be here—and we owe it to them to create the best school possible. The best way I can describe it is that among our students, there’s an undercurrent of joy that I have not seen anywhere else, and it makes it a wonderful place to come to work every day. Even one of the people I recently hired has noticed it. She came up to me and said, “I can’t stop smiling!”

If you know a graduate, student, employee, or other member of Team HISD who should be featured here, please email us at info@houstonisd.org.