HISD art clubs and classes assembled at MacGregor Park to take part in the 2023 Houston Art Bike Parade and Festival on Saturday, May 13. Presented by the Houston Parks Board and The Orange Show Center for Visionary Art, the Art Bike Festival is an annual opportunity for students and community artists to showcase their creativity and to explore the bayou trails around the park.
Continue readingTag Archives: Harvard ES
BrainAbouts promotes positive decision making with HISD elementary students
Young learners can make positive choices and develop healthy brains when equipped with the right tools, knowledge, and support.
Continue readingTeach Plus names 11 HISD educators to its state policy fellowship cohort
The national nonprofit Teach Plus has selected 45 Texas teachers to be a part of its 2022-2023 Policy Fellowship cohort, and 11 of them are from HISD.
Continue readingHarvard ES names Dr. Shelby Smith as new principal
Dr. Shelby Smith has been selected as the new principal of Harvard Elementary School.
Continue readingHarvard Elementary School turns 123
Harvard Elementary School marked an important milestone on Sept. 18 when the school celebrated being 123 years old.
Continue readingStudent goes from Harvard ES to Harvard University
Bridgett Ramirez was born and raised in Houston, the oldest of three children. She began her formal education at Harvard Elementary School and is now attending Harvard University in Boston. She is the first in her family to go to college after graduating from Lanier Middle School and Heights High School.
Ramirez credits the HISD EMERGE program with helping her get into Harvard U. “EMERGE gave me the mentorship that my parents were not able to provide. The one-on-one relationship that I built with (EMERGE Program Manager) Esau Molina was so valuable. He made sure I was prepared for the college-application process, and he helped me get SAT prep.” Continue reading
Students win prizes in video contest for demonstrating web savvy
Harvard ES fifth-grader Callie Bream took home a gift card for $150 as the inaugural first-place prize winner of a new monthly video contest.
Keeping email accounts secure with strong passwords is an important aspect of responsible digital citizenship, and students from two HISD schools have demonstrated their mastery of this concept by winning the top prizes in a video production contest co-sponsored by the Future of Privacy Forum (FPF) and HISD’s Educational Technology team.
Harvard Elementary School students won four of the five prizes available (first and second, as well as two honorable mentions), while a student from Eastwood Academy took home the third-place prize.
The competition was created as a part of Digital Awareness Month in October to increase students’ web savvy while also giving them an opportunity for creative expression. Continue reading
Laura Alaniz named new principal of Harvard Elementary School
Laura Alaniz has been named the new principal of Harvard Elementary School. She previously served as the principal at Gabriela Mistral Center for Early Childhood for five years. Under her leadership, the school established a working collaboration with Rice University to create the Rice Oral and Written Language Lab, which operates as a teaching lab for educators in the greater Houston community.
Alaniz has an extensive career in education. She has served as an elementary teacher, a bilingual evaluation specialist, a parent involvement manager, and an assistant principal at a comprehensive high school.
Laura received a bachelor’s degree in education from Our Lady of the Lake University and a master’s degree from the University of the Incarnate Word.
Steady encouragement, support lead to success for HISD students with autism
This week marks the end of Autism Awareness Month, so we asked some of our parents of students with autism about their families’ experiences with HISD, to find out what they felt contributed the most to their students’ successes.
Noah poses with a trophy he won in a robotics competition.
Kristi Anders, the parent of a 12-year-old who is finishing up his last year in elementary school, says her son has flourished at two different campuses due to the inclusive environments created there by caring staff members.
“Noah’s teachers and principal at Garden Oaks Montessori were so accepting and supportive of him,” she said. “He has had to learn his limits and figure out what works for him and what doesn’t, but we bought him noise-reducing headphones and he learned to tell people when they were in his personal space. His teacher would also send him on errands or to get a drink of water when she could see he was getting frustrated. In the third grade, Noah’s friends voted him class president.”
Former HISD trustee now serving children as a classroom teacher
In this week’s edition of I am HISD, which features district students, graduates, employees, and other team members, Harvard Elementary School third-grade teacher (and former District I Board of Education member) Karla Cisneros talks about how she went from the classroom to the boardroom and back again, the greatest gifts of her experience as a trustee, and if she’d ever consider running for that office again.
You represented District I on HISD’s Board of Education for five years in the early aughts, even serving as its president one year. Now you’re teaching third-graders at one of our elementary schools. How did that transition come about?
Karla Cisneros with her students at Harvard ES
Well, I was not a certified teacher before. I was just sort of a mom who got pulled in. They hired me at Travis Elementary to be a part-time science teacher, and one thing just led to another. After I left the board, I was going to work with my husband, but I realized I wanted to be back in education at kind of a grass-roots level, so I went back to school and got certified.
And I really, really, really like being a teacher. The best part of all is the kids, but then, that’s always the best part. I knew when my own children grew up and moved on that I was going to hate being an empty nester, but so much of teaching is not just about teaching. It’s about helping usher children through their lives, not just the curriculum.