Partnership Principal
Magdalena Gutierrez

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      The key to becoming a successful school leader is empowering teachers. That’s the belief of Magdalena Gutierrez, principal, Lopez High School, Brownsville, TX.

      “But it’s not enough to just give teachers training,” she said. “You have to back up training with resources. When that happens, teachers prosper and students succeed.”

     Since becoming principal of the 2,200-student comprehensive high school six years ago, Gutierrez has used her philosophy to motivate teachers to create new programs to challenge and excite the Lopez students. Set in a low income area, 97 percent of the Lopez student body qualifies for free and reduced lunches and many of her students come straight from Mexico.

     “These students come with no English background, and some of them have never been in a school before,” she explains. “They haven’t mastered their own language, let alone English. And some of them, along with some of our locally-raised students, simply don’t want to be in school. Our challenge is to prepare all of them to succeed on the state’s TAKS assessment at ninth, 10th and 11th grades.”

     But Gutierrez, a former elementary school teacher and central office elementary science specialist, is very happy leading Lopez High, where she served as an assistant principal for four years before becoming principal.

   “I love everything about this high school,” she reports. “The teachers, the students, the staff… all are very positive. This is a community of learners, both for the teachers and students.”

    A major challenge for Lopez and her four assistant principals along with other staff members is getting students to see that education is valuable to them.

    “One of the first things we ask kids when they are sent to the office is ‘What do you want to do with the rest of your life?’ Most of these kids haven’t found their niche, and our job is to help them see possibilities.”

    What Lopez High can offer them is a career pathways program that exposes students to the skills they need to find employment in a vast number of careers, ranging from law enforcement to medicine to the media to accounting. These courses are electives above the core curriculum.

     “Once you get kids hooked, they stay committed to the program,” she says.

     The career pathway program was developed with state funding for careers and technology with teachers taking a major responsibility for the development. That’s where the empowerment piece comes into the picture.

     “Two years ago we wanted to integrate technology throughout the school, and some teachers started the planning for that,” Gutierrez says. “I would bring groups of teachers together to start thinking about it, and they began to see that it is okay to take risks to look for better ways to educate students.

     “As teachers got a hold of an empowered feeling, they decided to apply for a $500,000 grant that would allow us to offer them the professional development to become master teachers in technology. They realized that with empowerment they could become the best.”

     Delivering that feeling of empowerment is the legacy that Gutierrez wants to leave. “If I can help teachers change the way they teach, that’s going to last long after I’m gone. Leadership is not about developing programs; it’s about developing people.”

     This approach is making a difference at Lopez as students are becoming more excited about learning and that is starting to show on improved state test scores.

     “We were not doing well on some of the state tests, we saw that even in bad circumstances positive things can happen,” Gutierrez recalls. “Because of the scores we were able to receive additional state money that allowed us to revamp our entire language arts, mathematics, and science curriculum. We are still making changes, but the kids are excited. Our ESL scores were up last year, and I’ll guarantee they will be up again this year.”

     One thing that helps Gutierrez improve education is being able to do research, and that’s where The Principals’ Partnership has made a difference for her.
 
     “Typically, we don’t use research as educators, and I have very little time to conduct my research,” she explains. “But with The Partnership I find valuable information on the Web site and my consultant brings me information that I request. The Summer Institute is also a great place to learn and talk with other principals. I was overwhelmed by the information at my first Institute, but it was a good overwhelming.”

   Gutierrez can be contacted at [email protected], and the Lopez Web site can be found at www.bisd.us/lopez/.

Past Focus Principals:

Focus- Kent Bergum
Focus- William "Rick" Johnson
Focus- Ken Ball
Focus- Dan Tenuta
Focus- Charlesetta Deason
Focus- Rene Posey
Focus- Stuart Baker
Focus- Paul Smith
Focus- Christie Gestvang
Focus- John A. Butterfield
Focus- Janie Hill Hatton
Focus- Steve Warmack
Focus- Glen Clark
Focus- William Dunn
Focus - Richard Pemberton
Focus- Dr. Anthony Spivey
Focus - John Weigel