Growing up in a disadvantaged family in Puerto Rico, Lourdes soon learned that education was the way out of the poverty cycle. This understanding led her to complete her undergraduate degree in mathematics and begin teaching. She left Puerto Rico in 1979 to do community development work in Guatemala. She established and directed schools, an orphanage, feeding centers, and clinics. She procured resources for these entities through interaction with non-profit organizations and by obtaining assistance from Guatemalan government officials. Her community education work consisted of educational radio programs and parent education in various venues. Her experience in community development was a catalyst that led Lourdes to choose Research, Evaluation, and Measurement as the focus of her Master’s degree.
When she moved to the United States in 1990, she had to overcome enormous financial, linguistic, and cultural barriers to pursue the American Dream. She first worked as a Middle School Bilingual Curriculum Content (BCC) mathematics teacher in Dade County and then as Regular High School mathematics teacher in Palm Beach County.
She went on to complete her Ed.D in Leadership and took a position as a School Improvement and Assessment Specialist for the School District of Palm Beach County. Her responsibilities included leading NCLB staff development opportunities for teachers and school administrators, as well as speaking at community forums regarding the same issues.
Dr. Lourdes is an Education Consultant, Public Speaker and Researcher who assists districts and schools to create data streams through quantitative or qualitative studies. She utilizes programs, methods, and strategies to train teachers, administrators, district personnel, students, parents and the communities at large, to help minority students achieve academic proficiency.
She provides consulting services, staff development opportunities, and motivational speaking. Her seminars include: School culture, Hispanic and African American academic achievement, parental involvement, assessment literacy, assessment development, test-taking strategies, data analysis, goals setting, student motivation, team-building, , and mathematics content by strands.
In order to have a better understanding of the lack of achievement among minority students Dr. Lourdes has been interviewing hundreds of English Language Learner (ELL), Hispanic, African- American and Native American middle and high school students to find out, from their perspective, what are the underlying reasons for their lack of achievement and what can the school do to help them improve. These findings are used to customize strategic plans at the school level to help the target population.
Dr. Lourdes is the author of “Navigating the American Educational System (NAES): A Curricular and Training Hispanic Parental Involvement” program. The purpose of this program is to increase Hispanic academic achievement through increased parental involvement. This program provides bilingual educators, social workers, psychologists and community liaison the knowledge and skills they need to conduct successful parent workshops in Spanish. Over 500 participants have completed this program and are currently conducting numerous parent workshops throughout the state of Illinois.
She went on to create a program called “In the Driver’s Seat” which includes resources and videos on the ten competencies Hispanic parents need to improve their children’s academic success. This program is based on her book “Hsipanic Parental Involvement: Ten Competencies School Must Teach Hspanic Parents.” Her book is now available through Amazon. Dr. Lourdes is curently writing her second book. This one is for parents in Spanish and will be entitled, “Sentado en la Silla del Conductor” [Seated in the Driver's Seat]. It will be available in November 2011.
