Silvia Rodriguez Macdonald

Elementary ESOL Teacher in Clarksburg, MD

Silvia Macdonald is an accomplished teacher and leader driven by her own experiences as a minority student to teach current youths. Of Cuban and Spanish descent, Silvia has relied on her personal experiences to provide opportunities for the success and advocacy of Hispanic children and English Language Learners.  Her daily goal is to make a difference in the lives of the children she teaches and the community by affecting a positive change. Silvia transitioned into the educational field in 2005 after working as a real estate agent. It was in this career that Silvia noticed the difficulty of educating first-time homebuyers who were Hispanic and had difficulty with English. Deciding she could better serve the community as an English instructor, Silvia has served as the English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) teacher at Lois P. Rockwell Elementary School since 2005. Silvia has also served as a member of Rockwell Elementary School’s Instructional Leadership Team, co-chair of the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) Professional Learning Community (PLC), co-chair of the Reading and Writing PLC, and leads the ESOL and Academic Support teams. She has also chaired the Montgomery County Education Association’s ESOL Labor Management Collaborative Committee.  Silvia is an active member of the Elementary Council for Teaching and Learning and serves on the Council’s Cultural Competency and Equity sub-committee.  In 2012, Silvia was selected as a White House Champion of Change by the White House and the President’s Advisory Commission on Educational Excellence for Hispanics.

Why do you teach? My passion for teaching is driven by my amazement of how children grow, develop, and learn.  Over time, children’s experiences impact their learning and their future.  My desire is to help bring equity to their learning experience and impress upon each child that they can be and do anything they want as long as they make the effort to be successful in their achievements.  Every child’s first teachers are their parents.  For some, they may face many challenges.  I hope that I can be a teacher of inspiration to all of my students and my children, just as my mother was to me.  As a divorced mother, she was my first teacher.  Although we faced many challenges, she always instilled in me that my education was important and that it was my education and my efforts that were going to help me achieve great success.