With more than 20 years of serving Ector County ISD, Rebecca Ramirez has been named principal at Austin Montessori School.
All of her experience has been at Austin. Most recently, she was the assistant principal.
“I started when it was not yet a Montessori school. It was their last semester of traditional school. At the end of the year, I had to reapply for my position to go into the Montessori. I did not knowing what it was. We had an idea but to say that I had a deep understanding of it when I first started no, I didn’t. That’s something that grew once we went through our training and then started implementing the methodology,” Ramirez said.
What she loves most about Montessori is that they teach the whole child and that they are influencing the students’ future in a positive way with the experience they’re providing at Austin.
Ramirez is expecting about 540 students in prekindergarten through sixth grade. She has about 30 teachers total.
Interviewed before school started, Ramirez said she was nervous about being principal for the first time. But it is familiar territory.
“It does help that I have been here. I’m definitely comfortable with our teachers and our staff and the fact that I know them and how we interact with each other and our goals … I know going to a new school would be a bigger challenge and being able to build those relationships with teachers. Luckily, I have those in place already so I’m grateful for that,” Ramirez said.
Her goal is to make it the best Montessori school out there.
“I want to grow us in any way that we can grow. There are so many things to look at and just taking us to that different level and working together to get to that different level,” Ramirez said.
She added that she is very proud and excited to be at Austin and learning and working with everyone.
“They’ve watched me grow and I’ve watched them grow as Montessorians, so it’s a neat relationship that we have,” Ramirez said.
A native Odessan who is a product of ECISD, she went to Odessa College and University of Texas Permian Basin.
She earned a bachelor’s degree in Spanish and a master’s in educational leadership, both from UTPB.
Ramirez was trained in the Montessori method through Southwestern Montessori Training Center.
“At that time, the training center would come to our school and train us in person during the summer and on some weekends,” she said. “We did that for about two and a half years.”
They also had training throughout the school year during professional development and had some training in the evenings, as well.
“It’s compared to working on your master’s, the workload of getting your Montessori training. … Some of our teachers just returned from some training that they had. They enjoyed it. It’s always fun to see new teachers go in and get their training and come back and then they say, oh, I get it now. I see why we do that, or why we use that material and teach this lesson. It’s always fun to hear the stories,” Ramirez said.
Growing up, she always wanted to be a teacher. She wouldn’t have gotten there without her family’s support.
“I would get excited to graduate high school and my dad would always tell me, no, we’re going to college. When you graduate from college, that’s when we’ll celebrate and when you become a teacher. That was his work — encouraging me, motivating me and we did it. And my mom helping me,” Ramirez said.
She has one brother.
“I am the first one in my family to graduate from the university level, so that was a great experience for us.”
Ramirez has three children and four grandchildren.
Interim Superintendent Keeley Boyer said Ramirez has been at Austin for more than 20 years serving in many roles.
“She is passionate about Montessori education and the Austin Community and we are excited to have her lead the school,” Boyer said.
