Learning and Growing Over Summer

Topics: Professional Development

For principals, summer learning is more than just a reading list assigned to students. The summer break can offer more time for educators to learn and grow in their own practice. In this episode, we sit down with Chicago principal Dr. Efraín Martínez to share summer learning best practices. We discuss:

  • Strategies for students vs. strategies for you
  • Staff learning & growth
  • Who you learn from
  • Where you learn from
  • Book recommendations.

Dr. Efraín Martínez is the proud principal at Orozco Academy since 2015. Before beginning his principalship journey, Dr. Martínez worked as a Teacher Assistant of Spanish at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), as a 5th grade teacher at Rufino Tamayo Charter School, and an office manager at Rush University Medical Hospital, UIC, and at Northwestern University School of Medicine. Thanks to an opportunity with the Chicago Teaching Fellows, he became a certified Spanish teacher and taught at four schools in CPS. After two years as an assistant principal in both the south and north sides of the city, Dr. Martínez was fortunate to be unanimously elected to the most coveted principal spot in the area.