- It's so important to me that a lot of these kids understand that there's a future for them and everyone around here is helping you to get there.

(gentle music) My name is Alexandra Smith, I'm a teacher at Sand Ridge Junior High and I teach Spanish, ESL and a leadership class.

- She really is an outstanding educator who really, really supports and cares about her students.

(gentle music) She definitely has a fire in her belly for this work.

I think she also just is a very caring person.

She just innately loves to help people.

- I was an ESL student, I'm a first generation immigrant.

My parents worked themselves to the bone to get where they are and to get me where I am and all they ever told me was that I was going to go to college and that they did this for us.

Every step of the way it's just been a labor of love.

- You don't just want the student to learn about a subject, you want a student to love a subject.

You want a student to go out and like, engage with that subject on their own time.

- We do a lot of culture units, and it's really important for our Spanish speaking students to understand that when they're going someplace they're not appropriating the language or they're not going in as a tourist, they're going in with people who are really invested in the culture that is surrounding them.

(inspiring music) - One of the coolest sort of like cultural things that she does inside her Spanish classrooms, is the paper cities project.

The students get to build these like large Aztec cities.

- We all decide what city we want to build, what architecture we want to look at.

One of the ones we did, my students really focused in on llamas because they were doing the Inca for Peru.

So that's always really fun.

- She actually has experience as a former ESL student.

So she was able to bring all of that knowledge to the classroom.

- Culturally, for our students it's really hard because a lot of the things that we perceive here as totally normative like making eye contact with your teacher or things that are not expected in a lot of my kids' cultures.

It's just been really important to me to make sure that all of my students in my classroom understand that it's not a bad thing to be in this classroom.

It's a support system.

- She's really, really dedicated to the idea of creating a really safe, inclusive space for our students.

- It's one of those things where it's really hard because they are really smart kids.

They have to go all the way back the ABC's, numbers, circles, colors, all of those things.

And it can be really frustrating.

A lot of our kids just, they feel like they're not ready for school, but they really are.

It's just a matter of language barriers.

(gentle music) - One of the really cool things that she's done is create a very, very elastic late work policy.

- Time and time again I've had students come and say, Ms. Smith, I was having a really bad week at home and I just I couldn't emotionally handle doing your assignment.

And the fact I can tell them, "It's okay.

I've got you" is really helpful.

'Cause all of a sudden that kid doesn't have to worry about something that they don't need to worry about.

And I actually have very few behavior issues if any at all at any given day because my students understand that they're respected and every single rule in our room has a reason.

(gentle music) Having myself as a Latina educator for these students, I think it gives them an opportunity to see what they can get.

- We often think of the transformative aspects of education being the curriculum, which she's able to do for those students is in many ways serve as a role model.

- And I've had a lot of students in the past couple of years send me emails after they left my classes, telling me that it was really important for them to see me succeeding and not letting anyone tell me what to do.

(gentle inspiring music) These kids.

They're so smart.

They are whip smart and they're strong and resilient.

And education is a really, really, really important thing.

And it's such a gift that I'm so happy that I was able to attain and I'm happy to keep spreading that around as much as I can.

And I can't wait to see what they do.

(upbeat music)