Wherever You Are, Opportunity Abounds.

By Juan Ramirez, Superintendent, Crowley County Schools

When I first began applying and interviewing for teaching jobs, I only thought about teaching history and becoming a coach.  I lacked specificity, merely driven by a desire to impart knowledge and mentor students. I was not looking to specialize in U.S. History, Texas History, Geography, Government, or Economics. I just had a mindset to teach and coach. In hindsight, such a mindset seems somewhat naïve, doesn't it?

When I actually landed my first teaching job, I had no idea what I had got myself into when I accepted the position at Morgan Independent School District (ISD). I was hired to be a teacher and an assistant coach! I was excited! Then it reality hit me.

​When Mr. Bryant hired me to work for Morgan ISD, he hired me to be the Junior High (7th and 8th grade) English Language Arts (ELA) teacher, the Texas History teacher (7thgrade), and U.S. History teacher (8th grade). Four different classes, four different preps. Oh, just as a side note, this also meant I was the Junior High ELA department leader and Junior High History leader. If I had questions about lesson planning, assessment creation, data analysis, and state standards for junior high ELA and History, I was the person I went to for help. Is this feeling a little weird for some of you? Don’t worry, it did for me too.

​You see, Morgan ISD is a small Division II 1A six-man (football) school in central Texas and it epitomized the essence of a small rural school. When I was hired in 2012 there were about 125 students enrolled in the entire district. In such a setting, every student's needs loomed large, demanding personalized attention. My eighth-grade class had seven students. One of those students only spoke Spanish.

One of my students had an Individual Education Plan (IEP) to meet the needs of their learning disabilities (social, emotional, and academic). What I also learned about the other five students was that only one was reading on grade level and the other four were below grade level. This was just the eighth-grade group. The seventh-grade group had eleven kids. One who only spoke Spanish, two reading at or just below grade level, and nine reading well below grade level. As a new teacher at this school and new to the entire teacher profession, I found myself feeling overwhelmed.

There was no real support from a team to talk about what to do to help with reading interventions. There was not an ESL teacher on staff. Heck, honestly, since I was the only Spanish speaking teacher on staff, I was the ESL teacher by default, too. To add to this list, I was the Junior class sponsor, assistant football coach, assistant basketball coach, assistant track coach, and the Texas English Language Proficiency Assessment System (TELPAS) coordinator. Talk about feeling like I had just been handed to the wolves.

​In my first year of teaching at Morgan ISD I had a lot to learn with little time to learn it. I spent several of my weekends at school honing my skills, lesson planning, and looking for resources to help me. I would be there into the late hours of the night and even early morning. The work it would take for me to meet the requirements of my job meant I would have to work hours outside of the school day. Lots of hours.

This is what working in a small rural school is about.

You aren’t just hired to be the 7th grade History teacher. You don’t get to teach the same class four to six times a day. And because we did not have a specific support class built into the day for our kids, well that meant you needed to plan better lessons to meet the needs of your students. And if all this doesn’t sound like it was enough, my boss, the man who gave me my first teaching job here at Morgan ISD, asked me mid-year if I had ever considered being a principal. Yep. This would mean I would have to go back to school and get my Masters. But here is the weird thing, I didn’t freak out or feel as though I was drowning. I saw the need for our district and our students.

Mr. Bryant gave me the ability to become the trusted communicator to our community. I was out front talking to parents and sharing with them the success of our students. I talked about how great Morgan was and how my goal was to make Morgan ISD the best school in the area. I stood up for the rural setting and advocated to anyone who would listen about the lack of resources we had and how we needed more, not to just support the teachers, but to truly give our students the same educational experience as students in the larger districts.

Through my students and their families, I saw my past experiences in the educational setting. I could relate to those kids whose parents were immigrants and only wanted to make sure their kids received a good education. Even if they did not know what that may look like. I made it a point to always set high standards for our students.

After the completion of my second full year at Morgan ISD I was hired as the probationary principal for the district. It would be in this position that I felt I made the biggest impact on student learning. And guess what? I wasn’t just a principal. I was still teaching, still coaching, and now I was the person put in charge of district testing, instructional coaching, and student management for grades K-12. There were a lot of hats to wear, but there was always one goal in mind; give our students the best educational experience so that they left Morgan ISD with the proper skills that would assist them in the post-secondary endeavors and make them quality citizens.

In my time of being an administrator for Morgan ISD, I got to help lead our district from being a failing district on turnaround status, to a B rated campus, even through the Pandemic.

I realize that working in rural schools offers more than just professional challenges.

It offers an unparalleled opportunity to leave a lasting legacy. My goal in life has always been this, to leave a lasting imprint in this world. I probably will never see the results of that imprint, but so long as I have done my best to help make this world a better place, then I will rest easy at night. In embracing the struggles inherent to small rural schools, I have found fulfillment in the knowledge that I am contributing to a brighter future—one student at a time.