ACCELERATE LEARNING INC
HOUSTON, TX

Curriculum Production Assistant Why I Joined the Accelerate Learning team Before I joined Accelerate Learning, I was in the medical and dental field for more than 20 years. Science always fascinated me when I was in school, and I thought what better path than to help teachers and students learn science with our curriculum through our program. What I do at Accelerate Learning I am a liaison between our customers and the production department, making sure that the lines of communication remain open. As a customer service specialist, I provide support to clients, resolving any issues they might have throughout the ordering process. My hope is to help our company accelerate and grow by working as a team. We strive to build trust and strong long term relationships with STEMscopes customers. Together STEMscopes curriculum will help students and teachers learn and have fun through our wonderful world of science. I graduated with a degree in Broadcasting & Film and English writing from Boston University, and have had a career in advertising and television production. Since moving to Houston in 2005, I founded the company 360 Design and Production which offers video production and consulting services to small businesses and professional speakers. Why I Joined the Accelerate Learning team While working as a contract videographer for STEMscopes, I became fascinated with the idea of using the current technology to create online curriculum. I jumped at the chance to be a part of the Accelerate Learning team and to put my video skills to good use. What I do at Accelerate Learning I help to create video content for the STEMscopes products. Working with a small, dedicated team in a studio, we create video tools for teachers to better understand how to teach the curriculum. Manager, Bilingual Production Why I Joined the Accelerate Learning team I truly believe in equal and quality education for all students. From my own experience, I understand the challenge bilingual teachers face when seeking correctly translated resources for students, especially in science. Most of the time, teachers have to spend their own time translating English lessons into Spanish for their students. This is time consuming and a difficult task to accomplish when facing the many district requirements expected of educators. Accelerate Learning provided me the opportunity to have a positive impact on bilingual classrooms by strengthening the Spanish resources available to both teachers and students in the STEMscopes program. What I do at Accelerate Learning I lead and coordinate the Spanish product translations for our curriculum programs that require Spanish content, including Texas, NGSS, Early Explorer, and ReTEKS. I ensure that our translations are high quality and are aligned with the language used in our English materials. In addition to actual content translation, I facilitate publishing of Spanish content to the website and play a role in maintaining and updating Spanish instructional materials as needed. Why I Joined the Accelerate Learning team During my senior year at Rice University, I started working for STEMscopes to fulfill my work-study allocation. I quickly learned a lot about the company and its educational mission and knew I wanted to be a part of the change that the company was making in classrooms—and the impact I would have on the world. What I do at Accelerate Learning I’m from Houston and graduated from Texas A&M University with a BA in English. After graduating, I worked at a tutoring center as director of international development. I also worked as a residential counselor at a center for delinquent youth, where I taught reading and writing. I dabbled in real estate, but quickly realized my heart was in helping to create tomorrow’s leaders through education. Why I Joined the Accelerate Learning team I believe in the revolutionary steps we are taking to develop and implement heightened learning in the classroom. The heart behind STEMscopes goes far beyond just education—STEMscopes is championing learning. We have developed a curriculum straight from the classroom that is easy to understand and fun to incorporate. We have unparalleled teacher support, which makes me feel so proud. What I do at Accelerate Learning I attended South Plains College and Austin College, and earned a Master’s in Science Curriculum and Instruction from the University of Texas at Arlington. Before coming to Accelerate Learning, I worked as a science instructional coach in Humble (Texas) Independent School District. There, I managed the science department at a middle school and also worked with the district curriculum team to ensure that the curriculum materials centered around current best practices. I also developed and presented professional development programs to large audiences. Before becoming an instructional coach, I taught eighth grade science for five years. Why I Joined the Accelerate Learning team I am of the firm belief that teachers have the profound responsibility to help students cultivate their passions. What better way to do that than through learning? At Accelerate Learning, our ability to help students have wonderful experiences in their science classes is growing exponentially. Simply put, I want to work with Accelerate Learning and STEMcoach products because I want to see more students have meaningful learning experiences in their science classrooms. What I do at Accelerate Learning My role is to work together with my colleagues to bring high quality assessments and rich learning experiences to students across Texas and the nation. C. J. Thompson and I work together to oversee the writing of all of the multiple choice assessments and middle school content connection videos. We are also often involved in special projects, such as developing online professional development courses for teachers who are ready to embrace inquiry science learning. He began his teaching career with Teach For America as a 5th grade self-contained elementary science teacher, for which he was awarded the HEB Texas Excellence in Education Rising Star Award. Reid also provided numerous hours of professional development training and coaching to teachers in Houston ISD by being a content specialist for the district and then as an Associate Director for the Center for Education at Rice University. Subsequently, Reid returned to Port Houston Elementary as principal. In his three years as principal, he raised the accountability rating of the school from Academically Acceptable to Exemplary, earning Port Houston Elementary a spot in the top 2% of all HISD schools for student growth. In 2009, Reid received the distinguished Houston’s Emerging Leader Award from the Greater Houston Partnership.