Everything Beatrize Valenzuela said at STC's 2nd Annual Apprenticeship Summit

MCALLEN, Texas - Educator Beatrize Valenzuela received one of the biggest cheers at South Texas College’s 2nd Annual Apprenticeship Summit.The Region One Education Service Center STEM/CTE specialist received warm applause following her opening remarks during a panel discussion on partnerships and apprentice perspectives. STEM stands for Science, Technology, Education and Math. CTE stands for Career & Technical Education. Here are Valenzuela’s opening remarks:“Hi, good morning everyone. My name is Beatrize Valenzuela and I was a teacher at La Joya ISD 19 years. This is my second year working with Region One. I have the honor of being STEM/CTE specialist for one of the GEAR UP grants called Pathways to the Future. “In my 19 years as an educator I worked in low socio-economic communities. I was in Sullivan City for ten years, and then I was in Pueblo De Palmas. So I worked with those students from low income communities. “I was in love with what I did. And those students have so much potential, but nobody was tapping into it because they were in rural areas. There were not a lot of teachers there that have a STEM background. "So, when my students started asking for that assistance and I didn't have it, I made it my personal goal to learn. I started learning about robotics, I started learning about coding, I started learning all about STEM, and I started taking it to those communities and, lo and behold, they started placing and winning at the state level. “You know, we started to see that passion ignited in those communities and that's when I said, Oh my gosh, we are not tapping into the talent and potential that we have out there. “So I did my best to try to promote and try to foster that creativity and that passion amongst my students. But, as a teacher, we're limited in what we know about what's available, what's in demand, what are the jobs, what are the needs, what are the pathways. And, as I came up and started to collaborate more and network more and learn about the grants from Texas Workforce, I started to learn about the wonderful resources that are out there, that are available for us to be able to educate our educators. "And so that is the key. That is what is missing. We need to bridge that gap. So, we are working with Texas Workforce, we are working with STC, so that we can start to make a four-year plan, to bring those students in. We have students that are currently freshmen and what we want to do or what we're working on is, we're working on starting to prepare those students for those pre-apprenticeships and those apprenticeships so that when they come in, they're coming in with those necessary skills. “We want to work on those micro-credentials which are going to give them the problem-solving, the collaboration, the communication, what we call soft skills. But we want them to be able to have those badges, those micro-credentials, and we're so honored to be able to work with STC to hopefully be able to reach more students and the broader community so that we can fill these positions. We can fill these gaps that we know exist. “So, the main thing is that I want to take away from this is that we just need to have more of an open line of communication between industry and ISDs and educators and Region One can help bridge that gap. So thank you for having us here.”Valenzuela also responded to three other questions from panel moderator Carlos Margo. Margo is dean of industrial training and economic development at STC.Go to www.riograndeguardian.com to read the latest border news stories and watch the latest news videos.