(Seguin) — Seguin ISD’s top administrator continues to get plenty of applause by not only ensuring the education of students but inspiring many of them to continue the work. In a recent social media post, Seguin ISD Superintendent Dr. Matthew Gutierrez wrote “After being inspired during the first few days of school, it came to mind the many talents that we hold with our classrooms. As a result of this source of inspiration, I have decide to allocate a portion of my salary increase towards $2,000 in scholarships for graduating seniors who aspire to become a Seguin ISD educator.”
While the specifics behind that scholarship are still being ironed out, Dr. Gutierrez said he just knew it was what was in his heart after seeing the real work that was happening inside Seguin ISD classrooms.
“I think about one, we want to encourage students to further their education whatever that may be — vocational school, technical school, university — but, what I’ve noticed is that we are seeing, the research is there, fewer students choosing to pursue education. The pool of candidates that we are looking at is not as strong as it used to be because there aren’t as many people going into education for a variety of factors. The image that public schools have, some of the decisions that are being made by policy makers, there’s a lot of factors that are discouraging people from going into education so one, I want to incentivize and encourage students to pursue education but I think some of the best teachers that we get in Seguin ISD are those that graduated from Seguin ISD and we in fact, hired a few alumni to come and give back to their community. That’s another reason. I want to encourage people to come back and contribute to their community,” said Gutierrez.
Gutierrez says he understands that all scholarships can never guarantee that students will come back home to their community nor can it ever guarantee them a job or a job opening.
But what he does know is that it can serve as a spring board — guiding even more students toward that profession. He says it also sets in stone Seguin ISD’s commitment to growing more teachers. “Now, things change and I understand that. That someone may get married and that may take them to Ohio or Amarillo wherever it could be but I think the most important thing is to get kids to start thinking about coming back and contributing to their community and to purse education which I believe is a very rewarding career. So, that is what really motivated me, inspired me to do that and as I was going into classrooms the first few days of school and really seeing the magic that our teachers are doing in their classroom, that really inspired me to just do that at that time and announce it on social media and it’s my hope that we have students who are interested in pursuing education and coming back to Seguin ISD one day and have some applicants for that scholarship in the spring,” said Gutierrez. Gutierrez’s announcement was reportedly embraced by several Seguin High School students whose passion thus far has been aimed toward teaching.
The process for applying for the scholarships are expected to be laid out soon giving students the opportunity to be awarded the inaugural scholarships this spring.