September 2024 Educator Spotlight
I am nominating Celina Arguello for this spotlight because of her ability to teach mathematics, while integrating a focus on equity, culture, and care for her students. Celina has a master’s degree that focuses on critical pedagogy. She has taught both in Pueblo, Colorado, and currently teaches in Center Colorado, located in the historic San Luis Valley. Center school district serves primarily Hispanic/Latinx families, many of whom are migrant families. In her teaching, she integrates trauma-informed and linguistically and culturally responsive practices. For example, she works to integrate English and Spanish in her classroom. She has created mathematics lessons around making tortillas and utilized agricultural themes… Celina also helped organize an outreach event, Cafecito con Matemática, housed at Colorado State University. In this role, she gathered ideas for culturally responsive activities, through her connections with family and the culture in the San Luis Valley. For example, she helped create a station about math and hopscotch (a traditional game played in the Valley) and a station that celebrates the Sandhill Crane (which makes a stop in the valley every year). In her teaching of mathematics, she focuses on empowering and affirming the languages and cultures of her students. When we told Celina about this recognition, she was incredibly grateful. Here’s a little more about Celina and her work as a math educator. Celina is a 1st grade in Center, CO. She has been teaching for 5 years and has taught in Pueblo and the San Luis Valley. She has always enjoyed teaching math in these roles. In addition, she earned her BA at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and her MA in curriculum and instruction with a focus in critical pedagogy at the University of Colorado Denver. Celina is very passionate about working with families and teaching lessons that are engaging and relevant to my students. She wants her students to learn about the world around them, but she also strives for their worlds to be reflected in her lessons. She plans culturally responsive and culturally sustaining lessons that will empower students to feel pride in their cultures and communities. Celina believes that math is universal, however, families use math in different ways. She likes to show students that they are using math when they cook traditional recipes with their families. Their parents also use math when they grow or harvest crops. When she worked in Pueblo, Celina taught a lesson on making tortillas, which is a staple of traditional cuisine in the Southwest. Her class used math to measure out each ingredient in the recipe and talked about how the recipe could be doubled to make twice as many tortillas. She also helped organize a family outreach event called Cafecito con Matematicas where families were invited to the school for food and engaging math games. Some games were traditional games that the students had played before such as hopscotch and loteria, but they included math problems. She enjoyed seeing families play the games together because it provided authentic opportunities for them to engage in math problem-solving and positioned the parents, grandparents, and older siblings as teachers or experts. When she’s not teaching, Celina loves to spend time with her large family, play outdoors, practice and teach aerial silks, and cook. You can also find Celina outside in the summer tending to her garden. She has two kids, a two year old and a newborn. Her family also have a goofy German shepherd named Freya. |
This month, the CCTM would like to acknowledge