Her Story
About Cinthya
I started my career with a bachelor's in marketing and business administration marketing, working at an educational resource company where I did marketing, social media, and sales. It was through sales that I started working with principals and educators, and that's how I started realizing that I had a passion for education. I made a career change and got my alternative certification to become a teacher. I was a teacher for 9 years at a two-way dual-language campus, then became an instructional coach helping teachers and bringing student outcomes up. Now I'm a bilingual coordinator for Irving ISD, where I've been for 14 years total. I manage all the bilingual programs and ESL programs for the district. My typical day involves going between campuses and the office - I train teachers, evaluate programs and curriculum, create curriculum resources, and collaborate with other departments to make sure our bilingual students have what they need in their curriculum to be able to access it, including emergent bilingual strategies, sheltered instruction, and the integration of English language proficiency standards in Texas. I have a master's in Curriculum Instruction with a focus on bilingual education, and I was honored to win Teacher of the Year when I was teaching, which led to my role as an instructional coach because it was evident I was good at my job and they wanted me to build capacity with other teachers.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Cinthya
01What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
I would say, you know, be ready to be a lifelong learner. To be successful in this career, you're always having to learn and research what's new, what's better for our students. Also, learning a lot of soft skills, not just hard skills. Soft skills are really big in this job where you have to collaborate and talk to many stakeholders. I would also say be brave. Have the courage to speak up, to ask questions, to have hard conversations, because that's where the change happens. And I guess, also just be authentic. I think that authenticity is really important. People can see through it, and also, that's where you get authentic relationships that really make the job way more enjoyable.
02What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
Some of the challenges that we're facing now is definitely public school funding is at an ultimate low here in Texas, and because of that, it really impacts directly the subpopulation that I serve, bilingual education. Also, with the political climate, bilingual education is being attacked. I think that this administration is really pushing English and really trying to scale back on second language learning or just any other language other than English. And so we are seeing a regression when it comes to bilingual education. Also with the migrant patterns that we have, we're losing a lot of students in our programs. And there's also the fear around ICE, and we've seen lower parent involvement recently. Parents are not wanting to go out and be out in public if they don't need to.
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