ESL Educator Octavio Alvarez Honored by Presidential Commission

Photo: Octavio Alvarez

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The Civil Rights Project at UCLA announces that Octavio Alvarez is one of 10 teachers of Latino students from across the nation to receive honors at a White House ceremony sponsored by President Obama’s Commission on Educational Excellence for Hispanics.

Mr. Alvarez has been an integral part of Project SOL (Secondary On-line Learning), a research initiative of the Civil Rights Project at UCLA for the past four years, and a high school math teacher at Brawley Union High School in the Imperial Valley of California for 11 years.

Brawley High School enrolls a large number of immigrant students who often struggle to complete high school because of weak English skills and interrupted education.  Mr. Alvarez educates all of the English Learners in his school in college preparatory math, and has raised both the state test scores and the high school exit exam pass rates at his school to all-time highs.

Formerly an engineer in Mexico, Mr. Alvarez moved to the United States and began his higher education all over from scratch in order to realize his goal of becoming a teacher.