Sydney Garcia is excited about the new school year.
Recently named principal of Milam Elementary, Ector County ISD’s fine arts magnet campus, she feels prepared to take on the role.
She has been a teacher, a multi-classroom leader and an assistant principal. Milam, she said, is a good fit for her leadership style as she has been at choice and neighborhood schools previously. This brings both together.
“Milam is definitely a gem that we have here in Odessa … This really has been a place where I’m a couple of weeks in, but it feels like I’ve been here for months already because of how the families, students and staff have embraced the leadership team and knowing that we’re coming in to give it our all and they’re already giving it their all … It’s going to be an exciting year,” Garcia said.
She added that she wants this year to be successful for every student and teacher. Every student deserves to have at least a year’s growth, if not more and teachers deserve to have someone coaching them and growing them to their full capacity, she said.
“That’s what Ms. Thomas and I are doing. We’re growing our students; we’re growing our teachers; we’re helping grow our parents and families. In turn, that’s only going to help us grow and get better,” Garcia said.
A product of ECISD, Garcia earned her bachelor’s degree in multidisciplinary studies and her teaching certification from University of Texas Permian Basin. She also earned a principal certification from University of Texas at Arlington.
“It feels like a full circle coming back around as principal,” she said.
Executive Director of Leadership Mauricio Marquez said he’s glad to have Garcia leading the way at Milam.
“She has experience as a teacher, instructional specialist, multi-classroom leader and assistant principal. She has a strong work ethic and understands the importance of building relationships with members of the learning community. I look forward to working with her in her new role!” Marquez said.
From a young age, people told Garcia she would be a good teacher. In elementary school, one of her teachers gave her a certificate at the end of the year that said “Most likely to be a teacher.”
“They always told me that I would make a great teacher and that it was natural for me. I think because I heard those things I was like I’m not going to be a teacher, I’m going to be something else. I used to tell myself all the time that I wanted to go into the medical field. Then once I got to the end of high school, I realized that was where I needed to be was in the educational field. It’s just kind of funny because I feel like my teachers back then knew it. I just didn’t know it,” Garcia said.
When she graduated from high school, she worked at Zavala Daycare Center for a little while and then started student teaching.
Before jumping into administration, she became a multi-classroom leader, so she left the campus she was at and went to Pease Elementary School. There, she was able to coach adults, but still be in the classroom wearing both hats and maximizing her time with students.
“I thought it was only fair for me to jump into that role because I didn’t have admin experience, so before jumping into admin I wanted to make sure I gave myself the opportunity to learn how to coach adults and have that aspect of the position before coming straight into an AP (assistant principal) or principal role,” Garcia said.
She was an MCL at Pease and there was an assistant principal opening, so she transitioned into that.
“I was under an amazing principal (Micah Arrott) who really allowed me to jump in. Anything she did, she allowed me to be really hands-on and experience things that would set me up to be ready for my own campus. She included me in everything she did. That was amazing because I also did the Aspiring Principal Academy through ECISD where I spent all last year with a small cohort of assistant principals that were aspiring to be principals. They walked us through what it looks like to be a principal in ECISD, how to do that successfully and the expectations and strategies you can put into place. Whenever I decided to apply in the principal pool for Milam, I felt like ECISD had prepared me — from my principal when I was an AP through Aspiring Principal Academy and feeling like it was something I could take on and be ready for knowing there’s still a lot of room for growth for myself, but I’m going to get it.”
Milam had almost 600 students in prekindergarten through fifth grade and more than 60 on staff.
Her assistant principal is Jaclyn Thomas, who is also in her first year at Milam.
“Our paths have come back together because we actually worked together at Pease for a year and now we’ve kind of unintentionally brought ourselves back together. But we couldn’t be more thrilled that we’ve come back together,” Garcia said.
“In our previous roles, we led PLCs (Professional Learning Communities) together. We dug through data, so we already know each other’s thought process and how data looks and how that works and where our strengths and weaknesses lie in that area. When we came over here to Milam, I was named about a week before we accepted teachers so that did help tremendously to come in having an AP who knew the expectations and knew me … so that when we were ready to sit down we could jump straight in because we already had that relationship from working together previously,” she added.
