Mention teaching to senior Stacy Paola Flores and her voice rises with excitement.
“I’m really passionate about education,” the Houston native says. “I just love teaching. I want to teach high school English, but I wouldn’t mind teaching English to middle school students simply because I taught sixth-grade students last summer and really enjoyed it.”
Flores is a secondary education/English double major with a minor in English Language Learning (ELL). She appreciates the McAllen-Looney Endowed Scholarship that has enabled her to attend Peabody and pursue her dreams.
“My family doesn’t come from a lot of money, so the scholarship has been really, really important,” she says. “I’m grateful to receive it. It is a large portion of my financial aid.”
Flores graduated from YES Prep Public School started by Peabody graduate Chris Barbic, BS’92, as a charter school (YES College Preparatory Schools) in one building with 58 students. YES Prep now serves 3,500 students from sixth to 12th grade at seven campuses spread across Houston (see Is the Answer YES?).
Approximately 90 percent of YES students are first generation college-bound, 80 percent are economically disadvantaged and 95 percent are either Hispanic or African American. The school was named one of the top 100 high schools in America by Newsweek in 2006, 2007 and 2009 and by U.S. News & World Report in 2008 and 2009.
“I’m really interested in going back to YES Prep and teaching on one of its campuses,” Flores says. “I would like to use my ELL minor to be a source on the staff in designing curriculum, because I know the two languages [English and Spanish]. I learned both languages simultaneously. I know where the students are coming from, because I have that background, too.”