Spotlight: Christina Hartsfield, Texas City High School

Christina Hartsfield is a teacher at Texas City High School in Texas City ISD and teaches a career tech course based on education.  It is a course designed to inspire students to become the next wave of teachers.  Over the past few years, she has had to develop the course and its lesson plans from scratch. Each year she must personally recruit students into her program, as well as fellow teachers to become mentors. Each student not only receives instructions in class, but they also spend a class period at one of the local elementary schools as teacher assistants.  This requires the coordination of getting transportation, managing student/teacher schedules, and traveling to each class to observe the student. This has provided her students with a job experience in a classroom and the ability to see their lessons in an actual working environment.

Additionally, Ms. Hartsfield has the students involved in T.A.F.E. (Texas Association of Future Educators).  This entails Regional, State, and National competitions.  She takes students to workshops, trainings, and spends many late nights at the school assisting students with their projects.  Within her T.A.F.E. region, she has served as the Regional President and Vice President not once, but twice.  This is a volunteer organization that brings students with an interest in education together and helps fortify an education focus. Over the last two years she has also been invited out to several conferences to teach seminars. Ms. Hartsfield also encourages her students to volunteer in the community, taking them to local food banks, charities, and local shelters. The hours spent on these projects, as well as in T.A.F.E., are all voluntary. 

Ms. Hartsfield has a passion to see her students become the next great generation of teachers.  She dedicates much of her free time to seeing them succeed.  One of her peers went on to say “I have watched her develop close bonds with her students, mentor them when seeking further education, and go out of her way to see each student succeed even after high school.”