Corpus Christi Caller Times Caller.com - Lori Flores teaching teachers how to reach kids

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Tuesday, October 24, 2000

Lori Flores teaching teachers how to reach kids
South Texas Distinguished Scholar ranks second in this year's Alice High School senior class
By Jeremy Schwartz
Caller-Times

Paul Iverson/Caller-Times

Alice High School senior Lori Flores, captain of the Academic Decathlon team, has a ‘lifelong learner attitude,’ teacher Joseph Eberhard says.

ALICE - Lori Flores has reversed the roles at Alice High School. For 27 teachers there, it is Lori, a 17-year-old senior, who is doing the teaching.
   As part of a senior project sponsored by the Texas Education Agency, Lori is giving teachers tips on how to be more effective in class by making their classes more emotional and personal.
   This Caller-Times South Texas Distinguished Scholar in the general academic category ranks second out of a class of 367 with a 4.77 grade point average on a scale of five, or 5.36 with honors classes factored in.
   In the coming months, Lori will collect weekly questionnaires from the teachers to see what effect her ideas are having on their teaching styles.
   "It's about focusing on emotion in the classroom, it's about how teachers need to attach emotion to content," said Lori, who wants to become a teacher herself. "If teachers personalize the content, the students will remember better and use what they learn in their personal lives."
   It's a theory Lori, the daughter of Mary Ann and Alfredo Flores, learned from her middle school teacher and Academic Decathlon coach Joseph Eberhard, and one which she says helped her take and pass the Advanced Placement U.S. History exam as a freshman.
   "She's not afraid of anything," Eberhard said. "She has a lot of confidence in her ability. She's got that lifelong learner attitude, she's really reflective. When she goes home she thinks about things, about their meanings."
   It's an attitude she brought with her to Alice High School, where she captains the Academic Decathlon team and tutors junior high school students after school. She also has come in second in a regional literary criticism competition.
   But Lori said she has learned more than academics from Eberhard. She has learned to set goals.
   Every summer before school starts, she sets the goals she wants to accomplish in the coming year. This year, it is to apply to an Ivy League school and she will soon apply to Yale.
   She also fills out more specific goals on index cards that she reads each morning and night to remind her of what she wants to accomplish.
   "I just have this motivation to prove to myself that I can be a success, to take a goal and make it happen," she said.
   Lori's mother, Mary Ann, said her daughter rarely takes a break from her studies and interests, even on weekends.
   "I tell her to go to sleep early, but she says she has so many things she could be doing instead of sleeping," she said. "I tell her, 'but you have to rest.'''

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