Your Harvest Begins Here

that concept this year in hopes that it will be fully implemented in the next school year.

A Bilingual Campus

Hogg implemented a two-way dual language program last year, so current kindergarteners and firstgraders are in bilingual classrooms. Eventually, Spanish/English duallanguage will be offered across all grades.

Math is taught in English only, but otherwise, dual-language students converse in Spanish on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and in English on Tuesday and Thursday.

Spanish is the first language of more than half of Hogg students, so the program is a way for students to learn language skills from one another.

Besides that, most of the teachers at Hogg are Spanish/English bilingual, and there are several Mexican immigrants among them.

Yolanda Guerrero is a bilingual social studies teacher from the Texas Rio Grande Valley who has taught at Hogg for three years. She lives 25 miles away from the school, in Carrollton, and sometimes her morning commute takes an hour and a half.

“I wouldn’t change it for the world,” she says. “To me, it’s the perfect school.”

She tutors students after school, and she offers to tutor parents as well.

Almost 89 percent of the students at Hogg are “economically disadvantaged,” according to the State of Texas. Many of the parents work long hours, and some lack education themselves.

“If the parents want help with knowing how to do homework or test prep, I do whatever it takes,” Guerrero says.

Aside from academics, Hogg also offers club activities, including robotics and chess.

Corina Gomez, who teaches fifthgrade math and ESL, says as many as 20 students show up for chess club every week, and she takes them to tournaments around the district.

The robotics teams just started last year, but they won two judges awards in tournaments, says club sponsor Maria Teresa Gomez de Cortez, who teaches fourth grade.

Cortez also started a garden club last year, growing milkweed and selling it at Oak Cliff Earth Day. And she helped students hatch chicken eggs. Only two hatched, Chicken Nugget and Candy, and they found homes with students’ families. She’s applied for a Real School Gardens grant, which offers garden training for teachers and students. This year they plan to try hatching quail eggs.

Her fourth-graders adopted a lion-head rabbit as a class pet, which helps calm students and teaches responsibility and patience. Cortez also will include the bunny in classroom lessons about genetics.

“It has such an exciting, bright future,” Cortez says of Hogg. “The community supports us with anything we need.”