Blended Learning Coordinator Mandy Hinojos is working to transform teaching and learning in Ector County ISD.
Hinojos has been the Blended Learning Coordinator for a little more than a year. She had been with ECISD for four years and worked for Region 18 for a few years as an elementary science specialist so she did a lot of traveling.
Blended Learning individualizes what students learn to where they are academically.
When she was in school, the teacher would teach the same thing to every student whether they were gifted and talented or not on grade level.
“You … hoped everybody understood it. What Blended Learning does is we … take a look at student data from assessments. It could be a unit assessment that they take at the end of their units. We take MAP testing. We take STAAR; all of that. We really dig into those pieces to figure out where students have gaps and we group them … It’s really teaching where every student is … instead of holding kids back. Some kids learn faster. Some kids need more time and with Blended Learning, again, we’re transforming teaching and learning as a whole so that we don’t have any students left behind and we can push them where they need to go,” Hinojos said.
She added that Blended Learning is not everywhere in the district.
“It is in our strategic plan and we hope to have it … systematized in the coming years. But right now, we are grant funded with different schools and two of our campuses … Hays and Pease have a grant through Raising Blended Learners (through the Charles Butt Foundation). We have pilot teachers that go to professional learning that figure out how to do Blended and they make it happen in their classroom,” Hinojos said.
This is a three-year grant and they are in year two right now.
“Next year, we hope to have every single teacher at Pease and Hays be a Blended Learning teacher,” Hinojos said.
The district also has a grant from the Texas Education Agency that they are in the last year of called Math Innovation Zones which was at the middle school level.
“Three years ago, they started with sixth grade and they went ahead and double-blocked sixth and seventh grade math and English language arts so that teachers could spend that first 45 minutes of their block teaching on grade level instruction and then that second half, that second 45-minute block, they started to personalize or blend the instruction for student groups,” Hinojos said.
There was another grant called the School Action Fund grant that is through TEA and is in its last year at LBJ Elementary and Wilson & Young Medal of Honor Middle School.
She added that the effect of Blended Learning has been seen and noticed across the state so it is slowly sweeping its way across Texas.
An Odessa native, Hinojos earned a bachelor’s degree in multidisciplinary studies from University of Texas Permian Basin and a master’s in curriculum and instruction from Texas A&M-Commerce. She is in her last year of a PhD program at Texas Tech University. Her doctorate will be in curriculum and instruction.
Currently, Hinojos is the only one in her department.
“But I don’t feel like I’m doing the work alone because I have so much help from our Curriculum & Instruction Department. The campuses that have been learning about Blended Learning, they’re really taking it and making it their own. They’re becoming their own leaders on campus and so I feel like I have support,” Hinojos said.
She added if they could have more help, that would be great.
“With more people, you could … make a greater impact,” Hinojos said.
Director of Digital Learning Lauren Tavarez is beyond pleased to have someone like Hinojos in the district.
“Mandy has been in the role of Blended Learning Coordinator a little over a year and she has already made a huge impact moving Blended Learning forward in Ector County ISD. She works very closely with the Curriculum and Instruction and Digital Learning teams and assists our Blended Learning campuses with their implementation; her ability to think big and build on people’s strengths has set her up to be very successful in this role. Everyone needs a Mandy and we are fortunate to have her,” Tavarez said.
Hinojos and her husband, Steven, have two children.
