Marta Palacios

WETA Hometown Hero April 2008. Dr. Marta Palacios, principal of Bruce-Monroe Elementary School in Northwest, Washington, D.C., has made her life a quest for professional development and serving students in the District.

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Dr. Marta Palacios, principal of Bruce-Monroe Elementary School in Northwest, Washington, D.C., is the focus of a month-long WETA Hometown Heroes profile airing in April on WETA TV 26.

WETA selected Palacios for the demonstrated application of her personal quest for professional development to her work with students and their parents in the District.

Palacios was born and raised in rural El Salvador, where she overcame difficult obstacles to obtaining an education and earned her teaching credentials. Yet the Salvadoran political situation in the 1970s forced her to flee to the United States, where her credentials were not recognized.

Speaking no English, Palacios worked in New York City as a maid and cleaning woman, eventually earning her GED after moving to Washington, D.C. She then began an eight-year journey towards a bachelor’s degree in education; when that was earned, she became a teacher and then pursued and attained her masters and a doctorate.

In 1999, the District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS) asked her to become the assistant principal at Bruce-Monroe. Two years later, a committee of parents, teachers and community members unanimously chose Palacios as the principal, making her the first Salvadoran doctorate to serve as principal in the District.

Over the years, Palacios encountered many negative attitudes towards herself as both an immigrant parent of children in the public school system and as an immigrant educator, sensibilities which today she combats in her work. She strives to empower parents – both immigrant parents new to the country and those whose families have lived in the District for generations – to make an impact on the school.

Palacios invites parents at Bruce-Monroe to make decisions with her, encourages them to visit classrooms to support and monitor teaching and learning, and supports parents’ efforts to voice concerns at school board hearings and city council meetings. She helped create Parents and Friends of Bruce-Monroe, an organization involving nearly 100 families focused on issues of teaching, learning, climate and culture in the school. She has also instituted an innovative dual language program, recognized by DCPS Chancellor Michelle Rhee as highly successful.

Palacios is humble about her accomplishments, keeping the focus on the students, parents and teachers she works with. In many low-income schools, parents are seen as deficits, she explains. “We have been building relationships and changing those perceptions so parents are no longer seen as a threat or hindrance, but as assets and important sources of support.” One sixth grader from Bruce-Monroe remarked of Palacios, “She encourages me to keep writing and do my best on my work. She always tells me to try.”

Along with working closely with students at Bruce-Monroe, Palacios participates in Tellina Stories, a program of Teaching for Change, which is an organization that aims to provide teachers and parents with the tools to transform schools into centers of justice where students learn to read, write and change the world.

Programs at Teaching for Change include publications, family and schools projects, professional development initiatives, and workshops and courses. The Tellina Stories program works with parents to create and implement action plans that affect the academic achievement and environment of neighborhood schools through relationship building, weekly meetings, workshops, trainings and grassroots organizing.

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